


The Same Moon

by onekingdomonce



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prison, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Attempted Assault, Breakup Fic, Hate Sex, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Pining, Regular Prison Dynamics, Second Chance Romance, Suicide mention, Violence, drug mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:41:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 65,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22023529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onekingdomonce/pseuds/onekingdomonce
Summary: Damen sometimes wondered what he would do if he ever faced Laurent.With only three years down from a seemingly endless sentence and nothing but time on his hands, it happened more often than he would have liked. What he would say, or how he might act around him. Sparing Laurent any thought to begin with was bad enough; it was only made worse by the knowledge that he would never have that answer. If there was one thing Damen could be certain of, it was that he would never see Laurent again.Everything was about to change.
Relationships: Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince)
Comments: 122
Kudos: 307
Collections: Captive Prince Reverse Bang 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here is my fic for the 2019 Reverse Big Bang!  
> This fic was written for the amazing art by [ cheeriosnuggles ](https://cheeriosnuggles.tumblr.com/post/189953510793/damen-and-laurent-in-the-prison-au-for-the-2k19) you have excellent taste and were a delight to work with ❤️  
> A huge thank you to everyone who looked this over, i know it was A Lot so please know i would die for all of you.  
> The setting of this fic can obviously get quite heavy as it includes all the regular prison dynamics you would expect. Please let me know if theres anything else that should be tagged.  
> Enjoy!

_You told me mornings were the best time to break your own heart. So here I am, smoking your brand of cigarettes for the scent. I wonder if you still sing Beatles songs while you make coffee. You said your mother used to sing them to you when you couldn’t sleep, nineteen years before we met, twenty before you packed your books in boxes while I was at work. By the way, I hate you for leaving all the photographs on the fridge. Taking them down felt like peeling off new scabs, like slapping a sunburn. I spent so many nights carving your body into pillows, I can promise you nothing feels like sleeping with your arm around me and your breath in my ear. Still, it’s comforting to know we sleep under the same moon, even if she’s so much older when she gets to me. I like to imagine she’s seen you sleeping and wants me to know you’re doing well.  
**-The Same Moon, Clementine Von Radics**_

Damen was someone who, generally speaking, counted himself quite lucky.

There have been some hang-ups. Deals gone wrong, finding out far too late in the game and needing to reconstruct in a moment’s notice. Men who he’d believed to be loyal proving him wrong. Prison was definitely up there, that unanticipated blip being particularly inconvenient. Regardless, Damen learned to roll with the punches. Agonizing over his fortune didn’t change anything, and whining about it simply wasn’t an option. If something you didn’t prepare for presented itself, you handled it. If life threw a punch, you threw back a harder one. 

The idea sounded promising. Damen found himself considering just that, his fists already curling at his side as he watched life’s newest surprise step off the bullet proof, wire mesh windowed bus and walk in a single formation line, straight through the gates that have long become Damen’s home. 

Time did nothing to exaggerate the images Damen had buried in his mind, nor did it make it any easier to see. It was the same porcelain-like skin. The same kempt hair, shining a ridiculous gold under the strong August sun. It was the same blue eyes, as vivid and piercing as Damen remembered, scanning everything in sight with a slow, bored pace. 

It was that same expression that Damen remembered. Callous, uncaring, all flat lips and straightened spine. It was the very one that made Damen want to rattle bars and uproot the ground until he got a reaction, not unlike what Damen was presently experiencing in his bones. He’d dealt with that look for – he didn’t know how long. Too long. Not long enough. The jury was still out, depending on what kind of dreams were waiting for him when he laid his head down on his prison issued pillow and let sleep take him.

But it was that amount of time, however extended, that taught Damen exactly how to respond. Practice made perfect, and some habits were easier to fall into than others. One by one, Damen uncoiled his fingers and let them move to his sides, sliding into his pockets with his thumbs out. A feigned cool composure that betrayed interest, something that he’d learned from the best. It was shockingly easy to grin, what with all the different possibilities that were gradually unfurling in his mind. When their eyes inevitably locked, Damen gave nothing more than a single wink before he turned his back, welcoming Laurent into his kingdom. 

Things were getting a little dull around there.

It was only one night of sleep before they spoke.

Really, it was only one night before Damen convinced himself he could speak to Laurent without wringing his neck. It was a tempting idea, something to be filed away for later, but there were a few conversations that they should probably have that Laurent needed to be intact for. A reunion seemed in order, and there was no time like the present.

It had become immediately apparent that Laurent didn’t plan on approaching him. After he’d been led through the yard and inside the prison with the rest of the new inmates, Damen had only managed to finish his workout before they’d been sent back inside and into their cells. When the bars later slid open for dinner and Damen stalked into the room with the rest of them, it was to see Laurent sitting in a corner table with his gaze on the door. There were a few men already sitting with him, which didn’t surprise Damen. Laurent hadn’t seemed like he was going to bite their heads off for approaching him, which did surprise Damen.

He’d looked only at Damen when he’d walked in. Dulled figures moved around him in washes of grey which Laurent either didn’t care about or didn’t notice altogether. He was still and focused, precise in his disposition, like he was trying to will a response to his own bidding without lifting a finger or batting an eye. It made something in Damen’s stomach twist with a sharp pain. A knife, maybe. 

He’d ignored it. Damen had turned, clutching a tray in his hands as he made for the growing line, all the while forcing air into his lungs. It had been Laurent’s call last time, Laurent’s move. This time it would be on Damen’s terms.

When Damen woke that morning, he knew it would be the day. Waiting around for answers to come to him wouldn’t serve him in any way, and he knew better than to think that Laurent would make this easy on him. His body primed and used to routine, Damen was already up minutes before the five AM alarm. It rang loud and echoed off stone walls as he pushed the blanket aside and jumped down from the top bunk, and he was on the ground and on his tenth pushup when his cellmate turned onto his side. 

“It’s not a race,” Nikandros said.

Damen said nothing. The sounds of the prison stirring were just as routine as anything else, his normal for some time now. Just as he’d once woken up to the sounds of music coming from a nearby beach or heels clicking away from his bed, he now woke to men shouting and metal shaking.

Nikandros pushed himself up. He rubbed a hand against his face as he walked the short distance to the sink. The trickle of water was weak, and Damen lost count of how long he’d been at it and instead waited until Nikandros was done washing his face before leaning back on his heels and standing up.

Nikandros sat back down on his mattress as Damen took up the spot at the sink, cupping his hands with water. He didn’t need to look to know that he was watching him, or that he was hunched over with his elbows on his knees in that same way he always sat when he was silently passing judgment. Or speculation. The two tended to go hand in hand with him.

Damen spit toothpaste into the sink. “What.”

“You know what.”

Damen let one of his hands get wet before running his fingers through his hair, turning to look at Nikandros. He raised an eyebrow. 

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Say what?” Damen’s tone was even. 

“Damen.”

“Really?” Damen said, leaning his weight on the wall and crossing his arms. “How fast do you work?”

Nikandros pressed his lips together. He wasn’t afraid of Damen, or of a potential outburst, which Damen appreciated. It was one of the reasons he was his closest friend, despite having like minds for the greater things in life. 

No, he was just stringing together a speech. He squinted through the harsh incandescent lighting that turned him a sickly washed out color.

“I don’t want you to –“ He waved his hand like that explained what he wasn’t saying, which it did. “Or for you to –“ he trailed off again. He looked up at Damen, and it was the same look in his eyes that Damen had imagined on all those phone calls before Nikandros himself had wound up here a year ago. If he closed his eyes and focused, he might still hear it. _He’s not here. His things aren’t here. He’s gone._

The memory of it stung in his throat and put something sour in his mouth. He’d replayed those conversations in his head enough before this, he didn’t need that same pitiful tone or the conviction that Damen had been wrong. He didn’t need convincing. It may have taken him time, but time meant nothing when you had nothing but it. He knew, now. All of those stupid, wasted months wondering and searching and turning everything over were in the past.

“He’s here,” Damen said, pushing away from the wall. “I’m as surprised as you are. But I can’t just ignore it.”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Because I need answers.”

“For what?” Nikandros dropped his hands. “Damen, he left. You know exactly why –“

“I meant,” Damen said, shoving his feet into his boots without undoing the laces. “About his sentence.”

Silence. Nikandros looked down, then away, then he rubbed his fingers against his jaw. “You know you can find out whatever you want.”

“No,” Damen said, tugging his shirt on and turning around, facing the endless rows of cells. “It’s time for a reunion.”

One thing Damen didn’t understand: People who complained about prison food. It wasn’t gourmet, not even close, but food was food. So long as it sated you, all the extra trimmings didn’t matter. If you were feelings extra indulgent, get a chocolate bar from commissary. If even that wasn’t enough for you, don’t get sent to prison.

And so Damen grabbed his tray of porridge and his single slice of bread, his mug of water feeling obscenely small in his hand as he examined the room. He saw his table to the left, far enough from the food line that the smells from the kitchen weren’t overwhelming but close enough that the walk wasn’t a hassle. The guys were all there minus Lydos, who was probably off trying to fuck one of the GED class volunteers. He saw that his own spot was vacant, across from Aktis and beside Nikandros. One of them caught his eye, tapping the empty spot.

Damen turned.

He was in the same spot as the previous night, though there was only one other person at the table with him. He looked young, maybe a year or two younger than Laurent. His bright red hair was up in a bun that looked like he’d actually taken the time to style it that morning, and his hands moved animatedly as he spoke. As Damen approached, Laurent’s eyes remained on the boy.

Damen stopped. Dropped his tray. Looked down at the inmate as he raised his head, his fork paused in midair. The dramatic way he’d cut himself off mid sentence said enough about how perturbed he felt to be interrupted, but the irritated expression seemed to dial down one notch as he tilted his head back to meet Damen’s gaze.

“Oh,” he said, setting his fork down. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Damen replied, flat. The proximity alone felt like suffocation, and he wanted to shake himself for already feeling so out of hand. He focused instead on the inmate, who had to be new as well. One glance alone told Damen that he would have heard of him if not, he knew more than a handful of people who were going to lose their minds over him. _Ancel,_ his tag read. 

When Damen said nothing else, Ancel offered up a smile. It was coquettish, he likely thought it would get him somewhere. It probably would, with someone else. “This seat’s available,” he offered, motioning to his side.

Damen didn’t move. “I’d rather have yours.”

The smile grew. He rested his cheek on his palm, tapping his fingers along a speckle of freckles. “You might be a bit too big for that, but if you’re offering your lap?”

If Damen were still holding his tray, he would have slammed it on the table. He didn’t have the time, or the inclination, and he was just trying to figure out how to state that as calmly as possible when he heard a voice that made him think of venom.

“You’re not his type,” Laurent said.

Slowly, Damen turned his head to the side. Laurent still wasn’t looking at him, and it made Damen want to grab his chin in his hand. Across from him, Ancel had turned acerbic. “I’m everyone’s type.”

“Then go elsewhere and test that theory,” Damen said, not bothering anymore with gentle tones or a steady demeanor. “Now.”

He watched as Ancel’s green eyes slit together in dislike. He grabbed at his tray and stood in a huff, and Damen watched him flirt off to another table like it was a school cafeteria and not a fucking prison, and promised himself that he would tell Ancel who to avoid and who to try it with at some other time. Later. Now, there was business to attend to.

Damen placed his palms down first, letting the motion cause him to loom over the table as he swung a leg around the bench. Laurent seemed entirely unaffected by it, obviously, and he watched silently as Damen pulled his food in front of him.

It was quiet. Damen hated how quiet it suddenly was, just like he hated the way Laurent was looking at him. Like he knew how much anger Damen was feeling inside, too much for one person to contain. Like he knew how hard Damen’s heart was beating. 

Damen forced his hands to work, reaching for his sliver of bread and tearing into it. He chewed, lifted his drink, chugging half of it down before setting it heavily on the table.

“Welcome to prison,” Damen said.

A pale brow lifted a fraction, the only crack in the otherwise perfect demeanor. His hands were hidden from sight under the table. “That’s it?” he said. “That’s all you wanted to say?”

“What else did you want from me?” Damen asked.

He received the same quirk. Laurent did something with his shoulders, not quite a shrug. “That just felt like an anticlimactic result to throwing my friend away.”

“Friend?”

Laurent’s expression remained the same, though it came with an amused tilt to his lips that Damen didn’t care to see. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said, reaching for his own water. “He’s not my type either.”

Damen reminded himself to breathe. He reminded himself a second time, for good measure. Laurent was leaned forward with his retrieved fork loose between his fingers, and so Damen mirrored the position. He placed an elbow in front of him.

“So,” he said. “How long are you here for?”

_You’re here,_ Damen really wanted to say. _How are you actually here?_

Laurent didn’t blink. “You don’t even want to know why?”

“I know why.” Damen said. “You got caught.”

Damen didn’t know what he said that was worth much thought, but it still managed to give Laurent pause as if in consideration. He speared a piece of canned pineapple, casual as he said, “not as quickly as you.”

It was like being doused in ice water. Damen knew he should have expected it, _this,_ but it did nothing to diminish the wave of bitterness that gritted his teeth together. He knew what look must have passed on his face. He knew that his eyes were saying what his mouth was not, and he refused to look away.

“It’s no matter,” Laurent went on, cleaning his hands off with the fastidious nature of someone who was used to pristine spaces, though Damen knew better. He knew the kind of places Laurent had been. It used to be Damen who would take him there. “Here I am.”

There he was. Damen gave himself a moment to absorb the fact, beyond the tense shoulders and the dizziness. He took in the fact that this was Laurent sitting in front of him, whole and real and as unfathomably perfect as ever. His hair was only a little longer, though he could still see the golden ring that looped through his cartilage. The faint scar than ran down his cheek, the one that had resulted from a bar fight in a small town in Mellos. It had ended for Laurent in bloodied clothes and a very brash mood. Damen’s own scars were in less obvious places. His chest. His stomach. His knuckles. 

Damen made himself continue through the motions. Chew. Swallow. Speak. He was here to get details, not to get lost in his mind like this was three years ago. 

“Who’s your cellmate?” he asked.

A simple question, but nothing was simple enough with Laurent. “You mean to tell me you don’t already know?” he said. “I’d have thought you would have this entire place under your thumb.”

“I do,” Damen said. “You were my first stop.”

“Flattering.” 

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

Laurent grinned. It was wholly insincere. “Lazar.”

What Damen knew of the man was limited but enough. Lazar was arrogant and obtrusive, and could hold his own in a fight. Usually, he was the cause of those fights. He was irritating, but mostly harmless. 

“How did you know the inmates you sat with last night?”

“Jord and I go way back,” Laurent said. “And he introduced me to the other two. A whole welcome committee.”

“I’m sure they were immediately taken by your natural charm.”

”I’m sure. Is it my turn to ask questions?”

Damen crossed his arms against the cold metal.

Unlike Damen, Laurent opted to lean back. He rolled the spoon between his fingers as he surveyed the room. “Nikandros is here.”

“That’s not a question.”

“Patience,” Laurent was still looking around. “I’m just making conversation.”

Damen said nothing.

“If he’s in here, then who’s your man on the outside?”

Damen stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“Clearly you need some legwork,” Laurent continued. “To move the money into accounts, get the merchandise, that sort of thing. And then of course, there’s the matter of which guard you have in your pocket.” He craned his neck, looking behind Damen’s back as he scanned the room. “Give me a few days to get to know everyone. It shouldn’t be too difficult.” 

“And then,” Laurent pointed the spoon at Damen. “The big question of what it is you’re selling. Not drugs,” he said. “Not you. Cigarettes, maybe?”

“Are you done hearing yourself speak?”

“Cell phones,” Laurent leaned back again.

“Cons!” Audin’s voice boomed through the room and followed a bang of his fist, causing trays and cups to rattle against the surface. “Breakfast is over. Back to your bunks, or to your job assignment.”

With that, it was over. Damen was grateful for the reprieve and resentful towards himself for needing it. It was Laurent who got up first, stacking his tray on top of Damen’s and sliding them both to the side. Damen followed him up, ignoring the call of his name from two different men. 

“I’m on laundry,” Laurent said. “Did you plan on walking me?”

Damen might have if only to make Laurent uncomfortable, but he might do something stupid like push Laurent against a washing machine. Or into one. Whatever. 

“Don’t get lost on your way there,” Damen said. “This isn’t the place to take a wrong turn.”

Technically, this wasn’t Laurent’s first time in lockup. 

Throughout the ages of fifteen to eighteen, Laurent had graced a number of different juvenile detention centers with his presence. His crimes had been more tame then, as were his consequences. And while it was his personal circumstances that had changed and not the impending threat of real imprisonment, the fact of the matter still stood: it had been years since Laurent had to deal with the reality of being caught. It wasn’t until a matter of weeks ago, when his actions finally caught up with him.

Despite the random nights and handfuls of days that he’d spent behind bars in his adolescence, a few stints in juvie were still no kind of training for actual incarceration. Looking around at his dingy surroundings, it was difficult not to think of different kinds of times. Black marble floors and glass walls that stretched from floor to ceiling, a buzz of adrenaline coupled with a skyline view of handfuls of different cities around the world. Granted, many of those places had been illegally paid for, temporarily secured after a night of gambling or once or twice, broken into just for the sake of proving that it could be done, but it had still been theirs.

Laurent didn’t allow himself to think of those times often. The moment passed quickly.

Regardless, Laurent wasn’t a complete stranger to this sort of crowd, or the less than pleasant atmosphere. The florescent lighting and the paper thin mattresses. The mixed groups and the colorful language, thrown around about anything from the people to the clothing. There were some norms that being a teenager and making a living for yourself – however controversial – prepared you for.

As far as Laurent was concerned, the first step to making his way here was learning the masses. You couldn’t join a game if you didn’t know the players, and it was always smart to have a few good ones on your team. It was why Laurent was spending that tier time for the day in his cell, rather scoping the place out or doing some other senseless, detrimental things that would serve him no greater purpose, other than temporary gratification.

It was with that methodical decision making that Laurent found himself hosting a powwow in his cell. He sat on his bottom bunk, a knee drawn up to his chest. Lazar was out of sight in his top bunk, though his legs swung down in front of Laurent with the laces trailing even lower. Orlant sat on the lone seat in the far corner of a whole few feet away, the chair spun around so he was leaning on the backrest. Jord lingered in the entrance.

They were fine. Lazar had already been in the cell the previous day when Laurent had been escorted in by a guard who liked to continuously remind Laurent of his new title and shove him from the back when his pace wasn’t fast enough. Lazar had looked at Laurent’s nametag, introduced himself, then looked at Laurent’s ass when he went to set his things down on the sink. He was talkative, but Laurent knew there were worse cellmates than ones who needed to be tuned out at times.

Orlant was more of the same, though he’d opted instead to talk about the female volunteer from the educational program upon their initial meeting, suggesting the class to Laurent as a worthwhile pastime. Laurent stared at him blankly before responding that he didn’t think the class would interest him, and Lazar helpfully contributed that Laurent would then enjoy his new setting just fine.

Jord was the only person he knew in there, at least on his own terms. He was a few years older than Laurent, and he fleetingly remembered him from what had once been Auguste’s circle of friends. It was a shock to see him here of all places, more intriguing than anything, and something Laurent might have gotten more information on if his life was one that gave him those kinds of possibilities. 

They were discussing something amongst themselves that Laurent couldn’t entirely follow, not with his limited knowledge of everyone’s backstories. They were jumping between a number of topics that floated over his head. There was talk of a certain inmate’s conjugal who everyone seemed to be convinced was using the opportunity to sneak something in, rather the intended purpose. The same name came up more than once, though Laurent couldn’t deduce if he was an inmate, a guard or outside of the prison altogether. Gossip on who was found in a utility closet with who, which Lazar had plenty to say about. Jord seemed to grow more morose as the conversation went on, and Laurent couldn’t help but notice the way that Orlant kept on eyeing him and wondered if that silent tension had to do with prison quickies and the way Jord was crossing and re-crossing his arms.

Laurent tipped his head back against the wall, surveying what he could see from his vantage. His cell was on the third row, high enough that he could see most of the ones lining the level across from him and the entire ground floor. Majority of the cells were inhabited, most by more than the issued two occupants, men sitting on every available surface as they spoke. He could see a few were napping in their bunk, which Laurent thought was both a waste in the middle of the day and blindly reckless. Scattered throughout the unit, a few of the open bars were concealed by a white sheet. 

“Laurent.”

Laurent looked for a few more seconds before he swung his gaze to the sound of the voice. It was quite familiar for someone who met him yesterday.

They were waiting for something he realized, and when it became apparent that Laurent’s hadn’t heard a question it was Jord who spoke up for him. “We asked if you’ve been assigned a job yet.”

He rearranged his legs. “Laundry.”

Orlant looked a little surprised. “That was a quick replacement.”

“Replacement?”

“We’re both on laundry too,” Jord said.

Laurent looked up as if Lazar could see him. “And you?”

“I’m electrical,” Lazar said. “Cellies are rarely on the same job.”

It felt like a pointless rule. Laurent turned to Jord and Orlant. Distantly, he could hear a loud buzz and a few successive shouts. It was coming as frequently as the ring of a cellphone. “Are you two -?”

“My cellmate is gone.”

Laurent had technically been a free man just yesterday, but the idea of it already sounded abstract to him. 

“I’m solo too,” Orlant said. He got up, spun the chair around and then sat back down so he could slouch low, stretching his legs out in front of him. “My previous roommate has been upgraded to solitary.”

“What for?” 

“What else?” Orlant ran a finger under his nose.

It was hard for Laurent to sympathize with such idiotic choices, but he’d made his fair share of those as well. It was nothing foreign to him, but they seemed to assume that it was. He nodded regretfully, and gave them what they wanted. “Sucks.”

“He did that too for a bump.” Lazar laughed from above, but it came out flat. 

Orlant shrugged a shoulder. “Not for me,” he said, towards Laurent’s direction. “He got the shakes every time he tried to quit. It kept me up.”

“Why don’t you just arrange something?” Laurent motioned with his hand. He wasn’t oblivious, he knew there were ways to manipulate those kinds of things. 

Lazar made a sound like a snort. “If you feel like dealing with Adrastus or Makon, sure.”

He saw that something was expected of him. “I suppose I don’t want to.”

“ _You_ definitely don’t want to,” Orlant said. “They’re the CO’s in charge of bunk assignments, swaps, that sort of thing. If you want to put in a special request, you need to give them…” He turned to Lazar. “How do I put this delicately?”

“You don’t,” Jord said. Laurent knew someone ready for a conversation to end when he heard it. 

Before he could reply, a screeching sound grated in their ears as a large cart rolled by. An inmate was pushing it forward and down the line. “Commissary!”

It was followed by an impact of boot against metal as Lazar got his footing on the small cabinet by the bunks. A hand curled around the mattress and then he was on his feet, stretching his hands behind his back. Laurent watched as the jumpsuit strained against his shoulders.

“Laurent,” he said, stepping up to the wheeled cart. He took the pen from the inmate’s hand, the end attached to a string that was tethered to the handle. “Need a spot?”

It was an unwonted offer, and not one Laurent was going to take. He didn’t know Lazar nearly well enough to decipher it.

“Look at that,” the inmate said, linking his arms atop the bar that he used to push. “The princess getting special privileges.” 

His weight was slouched forward, looking contented as his eyes moved up the stretch of Laurent’s legs. A different tattoo spanned each of his fingers. “Were you looking for an offer?”

It was, easily, the least offensive thing Laurent was going to hear. It was probably also the least creative. He pulled his other knee up, wrapping an arm around it. “I already have what I need.”

The tip of the pen scribbled quickly in the easy cursive of someone who was writing without thought. Orlant’s chair squeaked as he shifted his weight. “New inmates can’t access commissary money for a week,” he said, eyeing him.

“So I’ve heard.”

He stared at Laurent. 

Maybe a nap did sound nice. It was going to be a long day. He closed his eyes “You should already know how easy it is to wander the cells during free block.“

There were a few different emotions that could be associated with prison. Fear. Sadness. Loneliness. They all varied, depending on what kind of person you were and what hand you were dealt in life. You almost always experienced all three, and they were almost always experienced at the same time. It was just a part of the process. 

Damen wasn’t the kind of person who let fear control him. Sadness wasn’t worth it, and he was too surrounded by people to feel alone. The only emotion Damen regularly grappled with was boredom. 

The boredom threatened to drive Damen out of his mind. It left him restless, and at times made him crave a fight just so he could have something to do. That was the thing about prison, there just wasn’t much to _do_. Electrical was busy work, but it was so mundane that it was blanketed by a constant awareness that he was just filling his time before being back to counting paint chips in the walls. Aside from meals, sleep and any personal side businesses, the free block ended up being as humdrum as everything else.

The distraction of the hour was cards. The real competition was in the kitchen games, the buy in alone higher than most of the inmates could even afford. They were held once a week, always at a different time, though Volo somehow managed to always make himself present. The practical kinds of decisions were left up to Pallas; it was one of the benefits of having him on kitchen staff.

For now, it was just a simple game in the company of anyone in particular. They technically weren’t even allowed to gamble around the guards, even if it were to be with something as unthreatening as candy from commissary. It left them with minimal options, which was why Damen was mindlessly rearranging his hand and reminding himself that the activity that would ensue after kicking the table over wouldn’t be worth the consequence. Probably. 

Conversation was continuing to circle around Damen, oblivious to the fact that he felt like his brain was rolling around in his head. Damen summoned all of his patience as he scanned the table, considered his cards and then drew one from the deck. To his left, Lydos did the same, though it was with a few more muttered expletives and far more disappointment than this sort of aimless game deserved. 

“What ever happened with Hendric?” Philoctus placed two cards down on top of the ones that had been slid in front of him, and then swiped the pile away when no one contributed. “I heard three different stories.”

“He shanked his cellmate,” Nikandros said, as blunt as he was with everything else. “Middle of the night.”

“How are you so sure?”

“I heard it.” He flicked a card down. “Judging by the scream, it was near the stomach.”

Damen had heard it too. He’d also heard that he’d gotten a nasty jumping from a  
Patran gang the next day in the yard, for which he felt little sympathy. Only cowards attacked in the middle of the night with the advantage of a half asleep opponent. If you were going to challenge someone, even with the one sided benefit of a weapon, the least you could do was be on relatively equal footing.

“We’ll be getting plenty more of that around here,” Straton said, not without a little satisfaction as he nodded towards a table seating two unrecognizable inmates. They clinged to each other, though only one stood out to Damen with his fair skin and burnished hair that was made brighter under the florescent light. “Some of the new ones have some real balls on them, they’re bound to get themselves into trouble.”

“You’re complaining?” Droet spoke around the toothpick in his mouth, shuffling the entire deck together. “Man, you should have seen the redhead in the showers this morning -“

Damen tuned them out. It was nothing he hadn’t heard before, and his attention was incidentally diverted by something far more stimulating. Not red. Blonde. 

“Damen,” Nikandros said, as Damen pushed back from the table. Damen ignored him, just as he ignored the mentions of a new game as he made for the exit. He had nothing else to do. Damen had wrung out all forms of entertainment for the day that he could manage, and the blatant way he’d just been overlooked in the common room was irritating enough that he couldn’t just let it go ignored. He quickened his stride.

“Are you going to pretend like you don’t know I’m here?” Damen fell into step at his side, forgoing an invitation. His fingers itched to reach out and grab him by the arm, or to block his ceaseless pace with a hand against the wall. He shoved it into his pocket instead.

Laurent regarded Damen with a side-glance, not allowing him much more than his profile. Damen did the same. Boredom. Distractions. That was why he was here.

“I was confident in your ability to always make your presence known.”

“You still always have a retort, I see.”

“And you still lack subtly in all things.” Laurent paused in the corridor, took a step to the side and leaned his shoulders against the wall. It was impossible for Damen to guess what he’d been doing before coming into this hall. He hadn’t been at one of the tables with everyone else, Damen would have noticed. He didn’t look like he was about to offer up an answer. “What are we doing here, Damen?”

The languid arrangement of his limbs gave nothing away. He had to have been feeling something, if not just a sense of glorying, even with his pellucid stare. He couldn’t be so disconnected that he wasn’t aware of how consequential this felt. Even if he didn’t - Damen knew he didn’t look as casual as Laurent, who could make himself seem at ease in the middle of a gunfight. He’d seen it happen.

“Call it two old friends, catching up,” Damen said.

“Friends,” Laurent repeated, after a few beats of nothing but slamming doors, faceless voices and intercom messages. “Is that what we were?”

It was an empty tone that Damen recognized well, just like the translucency in his eyes. Laurent was good with words, and better at twisting them. It was a vain attempt at hurting him, because the actuality was that they _were_ friends. Laurent had been his closest friend. His confidant. His partner. He’d been – 

It didn’t matter. All of that was before. 

Damen did his best to school his features. He tried not to remember gentle fingers on his brows, his lips, on all parts that displayed emotion. If Laurent could hide, then so could he. He rubbed at the side of his jaw, lifting the hand after. “What would you call us, then?”

Laurent shifted against the wall. “Business associates?”

“Did you fuck all of your business associates?”

Laurent smiled at that. It was almost genuine, and the sight of it was almost enough to make Damen not care that it wasn’t. “Look at the language prison gave you. You sound like me.”

The conversation felt like a waste of time. They were talking in circles. It was something Damen typically didn’t bother with, but Laurent brought out all kinds of sides to him. They were good at this kind of thing. Almost as good as when they spoke without words.

“Prison changes people,” Damen said. 

“I read,” Laurent said, immediate, like he’d known what Damen was going to say. “That you don’t really change in here. You just find out who you really are.”

It was such a Laurent thing to say; Damen could have said it for him. The introspection, the effortless way of reversing the statement on itself. Causing doubt and reconsideration. Damen wasn’t sure if it was more bothersome that he still knew how Laurent thought after three years, or that Laurent still thought the same as he did then.

“It’s only been a few days,” he said. “You don’t know anything about what it’s like in here.”

“Okay,” Laurent said. It was far too assenting. Damen’s eyes narrowed.

An inmate on janitorial was pushing his cart down the hall they were standing in. Laurent had to step forward to make room for the supplies that were jutting out, towards Damen. It kept Damen’s back pressed against the wall. “Tell me, then.” The inmate kept on walking. “How have you changed, Damen?”

The hallway was narrow. Damen could hear the rusty wheels get farther away from them, the humming of dying lights wavering above their heads. It made Laurent’s lashes darker. If Damen wanted to count them, he would have to tilt Laurent’s face back.

“Inmates!” 

A nightstick hit the wall, loud enough to pull Damen away. He couldn’t move, not as he was, and all he could do was turn his head to see Guion at the entrance they had come through. 

“Are you deaf?” The cuffs on his belt swung as he moved. “Free block is over, get the fuck back to your cells.”

Laurent raised his hands, stepping back and away. Damen looked from Laurent to Guion and didn’t know who he wanted to shake in frustration more. Himself, probably.

“Are you paralyzed, too?” Guion said. He shoved the heel of his hand into Damen’s shoulder who only stumbled because he allowed himself too. “I said walk. You can see your boyfriend at dinner.”

Damen scowled. “He’s _not -_ ”

“I don’t care,” Guion said, giving Laurent the same treatment. “ _Walk.”_

The first time Damen had seen Laurent, he’d been draped against another man.

It was in a small club, a few blocks away from Damen’s apartment in Dice. Dark and packed, it was difficult to see much over the swirl of smoke and strobe lights that flashed against skin and illuminated passing features. Damen stood against the wall with his drink at his mouth, watching as Laurent straddled his barstool and leaned in close to hear whatever the man was telling him. He had a hand on Laurent’s waist, a touch that Laurent seemed to encourage as he tilted his face up to catch his eye. Laurent’s own hand was on the man’s thigh, moving up in teasing increments. The touch on Laurent’s side moved to his back, confident, and when Laurent angled his mouth away it was with a coy look that earned him hungry eyes. Laurent had lowered his eyelids, brought his lips to the man’s ear, and slid his wallet out of his pocket. 

He was good. Damen was confident that no one else had seen him, least of all the man who was now looking sufficiently distracted. Sly and careful, Damen was fairly certain that Laurent would be walking out of there without any fear of being caught. The only reason Damen had noticed was because he’d been watching Laurent the entire night.

He was enigmatic. He eyed everyone with this retaining amount of consideration, but was surrounded by an aura that said they could look but not touch, not unless he welcomed it. He looked very young, possibly too young to be in a club like that, but a fake ID was far from offensive to Damen’s sensibilities. 

Some quiet, ever present voice in Damen’s head raised the option of recruiting him. He could tell by the way Laurent moved and spoke with people that he would be good at fitting a role, that getting in and out of situations wouldn’t be a problem. He clearly enjoyed a good ruse, and the cut of his clothing and the polished look on his face was enough to tell Damen that he wasn’t some junkie stealing enough money to get by. Whoever he was, he wanted more. 

He wasn’t the only one. While that pragmatic voice was there, it was dulled out by the louder, primitive voice that told him he wanted Laurent for something else entirely. He just wanted him.

Looking at him now, Damen could still see everything that he’d seen then. The high cheekbones that begged to be traced, the full lips and the smooth bridge of his nose. The ill-fitting orange jumpsuit was universally unflattering but still did nothing to dampen his palpable beauty. He looked as untouchably cosmic on a dirty bench surrounded by criminals as he did under city streetlights and satin bed sheets, and it was exasperating. 

Damen tore a piece of chicken into two strips before shoving one in his mouth. Laurent kept on looking at him, nothing incisive about it, and Damen couldn’t figure out what the point was. Maybe this feeling was the point.

He looked away first, turning his attention back onto his table. Beside him, Nikandros was deep in conversation with Aktis over what he was supposed to distribute the next day, and what was to be left in the kitchen with Pallas’ other shipments from the produce truck. It was risky business to talk about in the middle of the cafeteria, but Damen trusted Nikandros’ intuition. 

Seeing that Damen was listening again, Aktis lifted a vegetable to his mouth and leaned his chin on his palm as he chewed. “Stavos asked for an extension.” He was speaking behind concealing fingers. “Said he needs a phone ASAP, and he’ll be able to have money wired after his next visit.”

Damen set his fork down, frowning. Stavos was mouthy, arrogant and thought he was always a step ahead of everyone else. His financial problems didn’t interest Damen. “Take him off.”

Nikandros leaned a little closer. “He’s always paid.”

“He’s always been on time,” Damen replied. “This isn’t a charity.” 

Heston joined their table then, effectively ending the conversation. He was old, far older than any of them, and mostly kept to himself. Damen didn’t know what he was in for but he’d had a handful of conversations with him, and he never showed any fear or trepidation for an inmate, a guard, or his surroundings. Damen respected it.

“Five minutes!” called out a guard, high up from the metal ramp that extended above the room. Damen looked up and saw Makedon, his vision of him skewed by the metal crossings that separated them.

No one showed any signs of getting up. Two seats down, Huet rolled his cup between his palms as his eyes followed a group of inmates taking their trays to the garbage bin. Barieus laughed into his next bite. “Not even a little subtle.” 

“I don’t need to be,” Huet said. He took a drink. “They know exactly what they’re doing. Half of them want to be looked at.”

“It’s a prison,” Aktis said. “Not a bar. They’re not all trying to get fucked.”

“Then you’re looking at the wrong ones,” Huet argued. “It’s the frosty ones who want it the most.”

“Like Lazar’s new cellmate.” Collective laughter. 

Damen stiffened. It wasn’t the first comment like that he’d heard, not by a long shot. It had only been a few days and yet he’d overheard an alarming amount of comments on Laurent’s plump lips, how they would look even fuller glistening in cum, how a good fucking would wipe that stoic look off his face. Damen couldn’t escape him anywhere, especially not in a place where depravity curled off the walls like a bad paint job. He reminded himself that it wasn’t new. He reminded himself to keep on eating.

“For real.” Huet leaned toward Lazar. “Have you tried it with him?”

Lazar - who’d laughed as well at the initial comment – gave a miniscule shake of his head as he forked at his food. It meant that he didn’t see the way Damen’s eyes narrowed at the question. “Nah.”

“Scared he’ll bite it off?”

“He’s too busy bending over for Pallas,” someone else said. He sniggered, throwing a bone onto Lazar’s tray.

These types of conversations could be heard here on a daily rotation, never mind every time a new wave of inmates were brought in. it was what happened when you locked up hundreds of men together. Damen grew used to it his first month, and absorbed it now like chatter about the weather. He wiped his fingers off.

Lazar took a bite of his rice. “There’s no shame in it when the cock is worth it,” he said, smug, and entirely unconcerned by how the dig had meant to be derogatory.

It could have ended there. It should have, but a random inmate spoke up from three seats down, seemingly unable to let things drop. “Think Laurent is gonna give it up for anyone?”

Lazar shrugged. Damen watched him shuffle his fork around again, before reaching instead for his cup. It was a non-answer but it was enough, until an abhorrent voice came from the end of the line. “He’ll probably give it up for the right cock.”

The reminder of Govart’s presence was like an unwelcome swarm of insects at a meal. His grin was lewd, and he seemed determined to get a response. “What do you think,” he said, to no one in particular because no one wanted to hear from him. “How do you think he likes it?”

_“You don’t touch him.”_

There was a belated pause. It had come loud and sudden, with a firmness that surprised even Damen. He received more than a few strange looks; indistinct through the haze he was hanging in. He’d nearly spat in Govart’s direction.

The silence stretched, and with it the grin on Govart’s face. Across from him, Damen could see Nikandros close his eyes.

“What,” Govart said, and Damen wanted to grab his jumpsuit by the collar and break his nose a second time. “Are you still upset about the last one?”

Damen was going to slide the trays off of the table and onto the floor. He was going to keep one, and after jumping over the table he was going to smash it across Govart’s face.

“Don’t be such a prude,” Govart said. His tongue moved between his teeth. Damen didn’t know if he was still the only one speaking, or if his mind had blocked out all other disruptions from what he wanted to do. “It doesn’t have to be like the last time. We can share –“

A remaining drink spilled over from the impact against the table, Damen’s fists causing it to rattle. He was standing up, one leg already winding above the bench. For a second, his vision had gone red.

“Hey!”

Damen jerked his head up, ready to throw whatever guard it was out of his way. Makon was in his face, his deceivingly pleasant features an unwelcome sight. He looked more like a catalog model than an officer. Damen bared his teeth.

“We’re talking,” he pushed out.

“That’s not what it looked like to me,” Makon said. He had a hand on his belt, like anything on there was going to intimidate Damen into submission. 

Damen threw his hands up. “Did I touch him?”

“Mind your tone,” Makon said, barking. Damen had to obey, but he wouldn’t lower his eyes. “And get back to your cell. Dinner is over.” He turned, facing the whole of the room as he curled his fingers at his lips and let out a long, piercing whistle.

“All of you!” he yelled out, voice carrying and bouncing off the high walls. “Cells. Now!”

Count. It happened every day. Four times, to be exact. Five in the morning upon wake up call, four in the afternoon as a mid day roundup. Nine o’clock at night before lights out, and three in the morning in the middle of their sleep. They could be expected every day, and Damen hated them all equally. 

Standing still as the guards made the rounds, rows upon rows of cells and rising levels where they weren’t allowed to so much as scratch their face. Being counted like inventory, the same saturnine immobility as If they were waiting to be executed. It left him feeling pent up with electric energy that ran through his blood, causing him to pace and breathe and run his hands in his hair and pace some more. 

Damen could feel it. He couldn’t put a name to it, but it was like something had climbed down his throat and into his body and was pounding inside him, demanding to be released. He didn’t know what it was, what it needed. It had come out of nowhere, amplifying the tension of containment that Damen normally bore and turning it into something nearly unbearable.

He climbed onto his bunk, turning onto his back and looking at the ceiling. He flexed his fingers, feeling the burn of each one as he counted the faint lines scratched into the walls, reaching out and touching them. He closed his eyes and filled his lungs with air, but the pressure on his chest only grew. 

The first time Laurent had seen Damen, he’d been shirtless, panting and covered in blood.

Granted, most of the blood wasn’t his own. It wasn’t how it normally went in those underground fights. There was usually a certain level of equality, an even score where both opponents gave as much as they took, and the crowd was on the edge of their seat to see who took the victory. Bills clutched in hand, shouts of encouragement and praise and over bets that had confidently placed.

Not with Damen, though. It had become quickly apparent that that wasn’t the crowd that he garnered, nor were those the stakes. Standing in the shadows and watching Damen shake his hands out, it was immediately clear to Laurent that people didn’t gather to watch who managed to finally overthrow Damen, it was to watch in how little time they would fail to.

He’d been almost supernatural, like something out of a fable that only Gods and mythical creatures could understand. Sweat coated his face and shifted his muscles in light as he swung, and there was a certain energy radiating off him that Laurent was sure made every person in the room feel just as invincible. Or at least, made Laurent feel that way.

Laurent didn’t know if he fought for money, glory, or simply the rush of it all. Whatever it was brought light to his eyes and a weightless bounce to his step, and watching him move gave Laurent that same tight, delicious feeling in his stomach that he got when he settled a score, slammed his foot down on a gas pedal or felt the heat of a gun barrel against his fingertips. 

It was at that fight that Laurent knew that he wanted Damen, but it was the second time he’d seen him that he made his move. Maybe it had been fate that brought them back to the same place. It certainly wouldn’t have been the last time.

Laurent had known that Damen was watching him. He could feel it, and he knew that if he’d turn his head and lock eyes with him, Damen wouldn’t look away. And so he did just that, eager to test that theory and to see if he could make Laurent feel breathless again. It only took a look, a silent dare, an understanding set in place from across the room. Laurent could no longer remember who finally approached who, just as he couldn’t remember who pulled who into a dark corner at the end of the night. 

Looking at Damen now, it wasn’t difficult to remember that first time he’d seen him. No blood, no one crumpled at his feet, but he was otherwise in a reminiscent state. His jumpsuit was unbuttoned and pushed down to his waist, his undershirt off and left rumpled on the grass. On his back with his hands curled around the metal bar, it was easy for Laurent to focus on him when Damen’s only current focus was lifting more weights than he had the previous day.

He hadn’t changed much. No more than Laurent would have expected. He had more tattoos, Laurent could see that now that his entire upper body was on display. It could be easy to get them mixed up, but Laurent had memorized Damen’s body, once. He’d be able to tell any difference. If he closed his eyes, he could still see the way it looked under Laurent’s hands.

He was angrier. Or just as prone to anger as he had been before, it was too soon for Laurent to differentiate. He’d thought that it would mainly be targeted at him, at least for a little while, but Laurent had seen the way Damen had nearly erupted in the cafeteria the previous day. He was hot for a fight, and Laurent couldn’t figure out what it had been to spark that dormant part inside him. There was no shortage of things in this place that would be enough to pull a man out of his own skin, but it was one of the first things Laurent had learned about Damen: he was far more layered than people gave him credit for. Than he gave himself credit for.

“You looking to lift?”

Laurent raised his head to the voice. Jord and Orlant were approaching him with their hands in their pockets, crossing the yard to him like they were old friends. Jord took a spot beside Laurent on the wooden bench, Orlant remaining in front of them. He was still trying to figure them out.

“You’ll have to wait a while,” Jord continued, jutting his head to the direction where men loitered around the weights. Lazar was there, leaned back with his elbows pressed to the chain link fence as he spoke to one of the better looking inmates from the kitchen. Nikandros was lifting free weights, deep in conversation with someone from his usual table. The spot behind Damen’s head was vacant.

If Laurent were sitting any closer, he’d be able to see the vein that flexed along the underside Damen’s bicep. “Just looking.”

“It’s not much,” Orlant said. He looked like a man who was used to rigorous practice. “There’s only so much they’re willing to shell out for a bunch of cons.” He shrugged. “But it’s something.”

“It is.”

“You should try getting here early,” Orlant suggested, though Laurent hadn’t confirmed any interest. The edge of his lips quirked. “With a face like that, it’ll do you good to put some weight on those skinny arms.”

Laurent looked down at his baggy, shapeless clothing. “You think?”

“Good luck getting there,” Jord said. His knee was bouncing up and down, shaking the bench in uneven jolts. “Your best chance at touching the weights is having Damen thrown in solitary.”

Laurent turned to him. “Damen?”

“The big one.” 

Laurent looked at the group. Squinted. Ignored the blister in his chest. “Damianos?”

“Right,” Jord leaned back on his palms. “The tags. He goes by Damen.”

Laurent lifted his chin. He watched Damen set the bar back on its stand, lifting himself up without sparing a thought to possible fatigue. He caught the shirt that was tossed to him, using it to wipe his face and push his hair back. He nudged his head to the side.

“What’s their story?” Laurent asked. His skin was warm. He needed to distract himself.

“Pallas?” Orlant gave the inmate who’d taken up the bench a sparing look. “I hear he keeps it close with Veretians, actually.” He turned suggestive eyes on Laurent.

“Riveting,” Laurent said. “But I meant about what they’re selling.”

“Nothing revolutionary,” Jord rubbed at the edge of his jaw. “You know. The standard contraband, give or take some things.”

“What things?”

“Nothing you couldn’t find in any other corner of this place,” Orlant interjected, sitting down where their legs rested. “So don’t worry about feeling deprived.”

Laurent had been deprived of the only thing he needed for years. Contrary to popular belief, it did not get better. He hummed.

“If you want something,” Jord continued, leading the prison orientation. “You would ask Damen. Sometimes Nikandros. They’re decent, as far as convicted criminals go.”

“Good to know,” Laurent said. 

He thought he said that. It was hard to concentrate, hard to drudge back something from just a few seconds ago when Damen’s eyes were on him.

It was stupid. It was like dangling his finger in front of a mousetrap, or taunting yourself with thoughts of early release. His old mantra swam back up, playing in his head like a self-imposed hymn. It wasn’t worth it, it was all for the best. Absorb. Repeat. 

“You know,” Orlant was saying, leaning into Laurent’s view. “Nothing comes for free here. We barter. Profit. Nobody is gonna be handing out free gifts, not unless you give them something in return.”

Laurent severed the moment, knowing it was the right thing to do. He looked at Orlant and then up at the sky, letting the sun warm his face and allow him the reprieve of closing his eyes. He was free to see Damen, like this.

“With a face like this,” he said. “I’m not worried.”

The issue with the electrical job assignment was that it lacked consistency. There was only occasionally something to be done, a task that was simple enough that it could be taught through a handbook and no official training. The prison was poorly taken care of, and the last thing the warden or the department of corrections were going to spend their funds on was a new microwave for a bunch of convicts to heat up a ten dollar commissary burrito. 

So much of the time it was just a bunch of them sitting around and reading an instruction manual on how to fix a lamp in one of the guard’s offices or fucking around with a mix of faulty wires with the awareness that accidentally getting electrocuted would be their problem. But sometimes, there was an actual appliance that needed fixing, and those were the times where they could actually use their hands. 

It was Damen’s turn that day. There was a broken washing machine in the laundry room that needed fixing, and it was lucky Damen who was chosen by Audin and tossed a tool belt to sling around the waist.

“Those are all counted,” Audin said, watching with a shoulder on the wall as Damen adjusted it in place. “Don’t get any ideas.”

As if Damen would use a cheap screwdriver to kill someone when he had two perfectly good hands. He ignored the posturing, grabbed the manual and walked forward.

“Hands out.”

Damen tucked the booklet beneath his underarm, extending his arms with his palms up. The iron dug into his skin as the cuffs were closed around his wrists, too tight, and he weathered the awkward angle of holding the book in place while walking with his arms before him. The material of his clothing didn’t lend much of a grip; it was an effort not to let it slip.

Audin righted himself. “Let’s go.”

Damen walked in front of him. The electrical shed was in the back of the yard, the laundry room inside the prison and a considerable trek away. The yard was empty apart from a group of inmates on maintenance, walking in a line before the CO Berenger with a sandbag slung over their shoulders. Audin said something as they crossed paths, a laugh slipping out under his breath, but Berenger’s expression remained placid as he led the inmates towards one of the side entrances. 

“Pussy,” Audin muttered. 

When Damen looked at him flatly, Audin returned the glare. “Did I tell you to stop walking?”

They crossed the yard and walked beneath the twinned guard towers. They rose above the building in parallel lines, windowed in glass so you could see a man in each standing with a rifle at their chest. They entered through a back entrance, a buzz sounding as the door opened, and Audin took him through the lengthy hall and then a side door that opened for them with a scanner. They passed the cell block and continued to go through a series of doors and staircases that required a code at each opening. 

Damen could hear the sound of machines as they approached the room. Conversations, a cart wheeling across the room and stopping in a collide against the wall. Audin opened the door for him, motioning for Damen to lift his hands.

“You have an hour,” he said, hooking the cuffs onto his belt. “Get it done.”

He made to go. Damen waited until he was out of sight behind the closed door before he rubbed the side of his hand, turning around to face Laurent.

Of course. Of course Laurent would be on duty today, of all days, when Damen was stuck in this room for an entire hour. He knew that not all inmates worked their job at the same time, only a few needed at once, and it was just his luck that he and Laurent would be thrown into this together. 

A glance around showed him that Jord, Rochert and Isander were the other three of the day, all of them standing at different stations. Damen knew that Aktis who was typically on laundry was working the following day, just in time for a new shipment be stored away. Mathelin wasn’t present either, nor were any of the other inmates that delivered the bags of laundry to each cell. It left the five of them alone.

“So.” Damen took the manual out from his underarm and dropped it on one of the tables. “Which one is it.”

“Look at him,” Rochert laughed, shaking a pair of pants out. “Acting like you know what you’re talking about.”

Damen, a man who’d made a living by a whole collection of things that probably shouldn’t be mentioned inside of a prison, did not know anything about washing machines. He wasn’t even entirely sure that he’d ever worked one, let alone fixed a broken one. But it wasn’t rocket science, and he wasn’t incompetent, and he didn’t have a choice. 

“I’ve handled more difficult things.” Damen crossed the room.

“Have you?” Laurent said.

Damen paused. Turned. Laurent was leaning forward on the table with his arms crossed, his expression not showing much of anything. _You,_ he wanted to say. _For two years._ But the last thing he needed was outside questions, and Damen knew it wasn’t even true. Being with Laurent was painfully, unimaginably easy. The difficult part was knowing how to walk away from it.

“It’s the second one on the right,” Isander said, pointing. His voice was whisper soft and he barely raised his head, but Damen still smiled at him, not above reacting to that kind of bashful guise. Isander’s skin was dark like his own and concealed a flush well, but Damen could still tell from the way he looked away. That led him to accidentally look in Laurent’s direction, which only made him flush harder. 

Damen turned. He might have been too harsh with how he yanked the door open, but it was already broken. 

He flipped through the manual and opened it to the page that had been marked, setting it down beside him and spreading the spine out. The page was wrinkled but readable, and Damen saw a panel in the center that matched the one inside the machine, though the model was clearly not the same. It immediately dawned on him that he wouldn’t be able to hold the manual, lift a flashlight and mess around with the wiring alone.

“Jord.” He drummed his fingers on the page, still reading. “How much fun are you having washing a stranger’s clothing?”

“Not enough for twenty cents an hour.”

“Feel like lending a hand?”

He looked over at them, just in time to see Jord shrug. Laurent was back to what he’d been doing before, a pile of plain white undershirts in front of him, waiting to be folded. He didn’t look up or say anything, for which Damen was grateful. 

“I thought we weren’t supposed to help people on different job assignments,” Isander said. His dark brows were drawn together.

“We’re also not supposed to commit a crime,” Jord said, moving around the table and joining Damen at his side. 

“Seriously,” Rochert opened the dryer door. “What did you even do, strangle your puppy?”

Damen glared at the back of his head, boring his weight down on his knuckles. He had to tamper down the instinct to place a reassuring hand on Isander’s shoulder or step in front of him. It was no surprise that Laurent chose to raise his head then, eyeing Rochert and then Damen. 

Jord was saying something to him. His neutral voice was just filtering back in when the door opened, the regular sounds of a guard entering the room, followed by the unwanted sound of Guion’s voice.

“Inmates,” he said as greeting, sauntering in with his arms sipped in the sides of his jacket. The badge on his breast pocket glinted. “Field trip. A truck just pulled up with donated books for the library, I need you to unload the boxes.”

“We’re working,” Isander said. 

“I can see that,” Guion replied, like Isander had said that it was a Sunday. “And I’m not about to walk to the cell block to pick up a few equally useless cons.”

“We need to get this done,” Laurent said.

“It only takes one person to fold underwear,” Guion said. “And since you’re so eager, you get to stay behind.”

There wasn’t much of an option being offered. Damen closed the book and shoved it into one of the larger pockets at the front of his uniform, but was stopped in place by the point of Guion’s finger. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Damen shook his head. “You just –“

“I was talking to them,” he motioned to the room. “You have an assignment to do.”

Damen’s movements stopped. Everything stopped. He wouldn’t have been shocked if the machines stopped whirling, if the pounding of his heart halted. 

“You want us,” Damen said, speaking slowly. “To stay in here alone.”

However Damen was looking at Guion seemed to amuse him. He remembered Guion catching them alone in the hall. “What is it,” he said. “Lover’s quarrel?”

He was aware that Laurent had yet to speak. His silence was all that he could hear. Damen opened his mouth to say something, anything, but was stopped again by Guion. 

“I’m not here to accommodate your problems,” he said, before motioning to the remainder of the room. “And I’m not going to repeat myself. Out, now. And I don’t have enough cuffs for all of you so no funny business until we get to the entrance.”

Damen watched as they filed out one by one, his heart rate slowly picking up with each exit. He felt like it was being replaced by something stronger, a horse galloping inside his throat and kicking at his lungs, over and over. It was too soon. He couldn’t – not yet.

The door slammed closed. Damen stared at the solid metal as he took back control of all of his facilities, starting with his breathing. He focused on the sound of it, taking it in through his nose and out of his mouth, the weight of it filling his chest. He could. He would have to.

Laurent was watching him now. Pointedly, shamelessly, not bothering to downplay it the way he might have around others where he acted like they were nothing more than strangers. He was messing with a shirt, crossing both sides over and folding it down, placing it into a bag. He did all of this without looking.

“The machine,” Laurent said. 

It was enough to snap Damen out of it. He faced the row of machines, and the fact that he needed to figure out how to get this thing running again now that he was stuck in here with Laurent seemed ludicrous. The silence surrounding them was maddening, and Damen undid the tool belt and dropped it down onto the table just so he could break it for a moment. 

He knew Laurent was still watching him. He didn’t care if it was a cliché, or if there was any general truth to the saying, but he could _feel_ Laurent’s eyes on him. It burned straight through his back and into each of his muscles, coiling them tightly and hindering every movement he made. The reopening of the door, the crinkle of paper. It was all calculated, all a conscious response to two scrutinizing eyes boring into him.

“You don’t need a hand anymore?”

His voice was closer than Damen had expected, much closer. It crept into his ear and tapped on his shoulder, and Damen jolted around to find Laurent a few inches from him, standing there comfortably like there was nowhere else he should be.

“Not from you,” Damen said. He spoke clearly. Controlled. 

The corners of Laurent’s lips lifted. It was like seeing an old favored photograph again, one that you’d crumpled up as small as you possibly could. “You never used to complain about my hands.” 

He said it in a genial voice, and control snapped like a fragile twig. 

The slim flashlight felt like a trinket between Damen’s fingers. He rolled it against his palm as Laurent closed the space and leaned a hip on the adjacent machine, looking into the dark interior. “You know you can’t do this alone.”

“Can’t I?”

He’d said it with a step back, seeking distance, but Laurent followed it without missing a beat. His scent, it was – Damen didn’t know how he could still recognize something so basic, how just a trace of that fresh and clean smell could take his mind years back to early mornings, to open balconies and tangled limbs. He was suffocating in it, in _then._

“Damen,” Laurent said.

Damen didn’t want to hear it. He couldn’t, that voice around his name was too familiar, and the closeness was taking his head and smashing it with thoughts that no longer had any place.

He didn’t wait to see what Laurent was going to say. He didn’t care. His hands were moving before he’d made the decision for them to, pressing into Laurent’s chest and shoving until his back slammed into the flat surface of the washing machine.

The collision his body made was louder than Damen had been expecting. The sound of it was gratifying, Damen wanted to hear it again, and so he slammed his hand into the spot right beside Laurent’s head, letting it shake behind Laurent and ring out around them. He could feel it vibrating through his skin, pulsing like a ripple.

Laurent seemed entirely unaffected by it. He hardly blinked, barely even flinched. It nearly drove Damen out of his skin that Laurent could so easily get a reaction out of Damen, like he was still pulling his strings. It was infuriating. He brought his second hand onto Laurent’s other side and closed him in like that, willing him to react. Some sign, anything to show that he – that Damen wasn’t the only one who was –

It wasn’t enough. The hard impact, the impression. It was like Laurent had expected it all because he knew Damen. His blue eyes moved up his body and stopped at his face, and it only made Damen step closer, press closer.

His own chest was moving, and he could feel the way Laurent’s was now, like this. The proximity, the touching. So close but not quite there. But Damen knew Laurent too, just as well as he knew himself, and so he didn’t let anything stop him from closing that last space and pressing his mouth against Laurent’s.

For a moment, just a moment, Damen was transfixed in time. They weren’t anywhere, just two men pressed against each other as close as two people could be. Like coming home, Laurent’s lips were still so soft under his, and _Damen was kissing them again._

And then the moment was over. Damen wrenched himself away, no other part of his body moving, and he was struck by the notion of how small Laurent seemed against him when he was always so large before everything else. His mouth was red and his cheeks colored, and something inside Damen’s chest pounded it’s fists.

Laurent’s lips parted. To speak, to command, Damen didn’t know. He didn’t want to hear it, to have Laurent ruin everything again with cutting words and the sound of his honeyed tone, so he decided instead to shut him up a second time. 

It came just as hard as everything else had, teeth clanging against each other. Damen didn’t care, if he tasted blood then he would lick it off, would suck Laurent’s lip between his own the way he knew he liked, the way that drew a low, helpless sound from him.

Laurent’s entire body was still against his. His was unmoving, nothing but the hitched breath that Damen just caught over the roaring in his ears, his legs doing nothing to kick or move away or walk. His arms were motionless at his sides.

Until, they weren’t. Damen felt it on his elbow first, a tentative brush of fingers that gradually curled. Not a push, not a show of resistance. A grip, one that Damen felt more than just physically, and it was the only remaining sign that he needed.

His hands were around Laurent’s neck. They had moved up his body, feeling every part of him on the way until he reached the smooth, elegant curve of his shoulders. He didn’t know what he wanted; he pulled Laurent’s face into his with the grip but held his hips in place with his own. He could feel Laurent tug hard at his sleeve like it would pull the entire thing off, and when Damen tilted his head it was so he could kiss Laurent deeper.

Laurent’s tongue was in his mouth. He wasn’t sure when it happened, when his lips parted so instinctively for him. He thought it was somewhere between Laurent’s fingers winding into his hair or the press of Damen’s knee between Laurent’s legs, rubbing forward. He did it again, and again, and the rush he felt at that was nearly too much. Laurent’s first responsive shift forward made Damen want to tear into his skin with his teeth. 

It was Damen who eventually pulled away. It was the right thing for - himself. He let go of Laurent and let him fall back with a thud, ignoring the slow opening eyes and the bloom of color on the sides of his neck as he turned himself around. Damen braced his palms against the table, spreading them wide and hanging his head low. He breathed. He shut his eyes and tried to breathe. 

It was just their luck that the door opened then, the shuffling of feet signaling that they were all back. Damen didn’t know what Laurent was doing, if he was joining them back at their station. His fingers were curled so hard around the edge that he didn’t think he could remove himself if he tried. 

It was Laurent who spoke. “Finished?” 

His voice was without a tremor, but it still came from the position Damen left him in. Damen licked the taste of him off his lips.

“Another CO already got a group before Guion came for us,” Jord said. He stopped walking between the two of them, or at least from what Damen could tell without turning to check. “Is Laurent helping you?”

“No,” Laurent said, with the same inflection as before. The rubber sole of his boots carried his voice away. “I’m not.”


	2. Chapter 2

Damen knew he made rash decisions. 

He knew he did. It was something he’d been told before by more than one person, he was prone to act out when something needled at him, and it wasn’t always something that he felt was in his control. It wasn’t an excuse, it just _was._

Just like there was no excuse for this. This colossal, unbelievable fuckup, this thing that he’d let happen and _couldn’t stop thinking about._ Every time he closed his eyes he was there again. Laurent’s breaths against his face, trying to keep up as Damen crowded him against the machine and kissed him hard and urgent, the way he deserved. His hands had just begun to wrap around the swells of Damen’s biceps. If Damen’s fingers had inched up, just a little, he’d have felt the silken strands of his hair.

Damen kicked the cabinet beside his bunk. _”Fuck.”_

“Shit.” Nikandros turned his head from the papers he was flipping through, reclining on his back. They were lists, numbers and inventory that he’d scribbled down in red. It was his habit to go through these things a few times over. “What?”

Damen fell back against the wall and let himself slide down to the floor. He put his head in his hands, rubbing up and down at the skin. He could still hear the reverberating sound of metal. “Nothing.”

He heard a sigh. He hadn’t heard that particular sigh in a long, long time, and the fact that he was hearing it again now was the entire fucking problem. He was never supposed to have to deal with this again.

“Don’t.” Damen’s voice was muffled. “I’m serious. Not a word.”

But Nikandros didn’t care, because he was his friend and not his lackey. The stacks were set down, and the brittle iron creaked as he swung his legs over the side, leaning forward in a position similar to Damen’s. It was so tiny in there; they could easily touch like this. Damen knew what he would see if he just opened his eyes.

“Damen,” he said, wearily, like a regretful judge passing a sentence. “You’re an idiot.”

He knew. 

The problem with momentum was that it built up. 

The faster you went, the harder it was to slow down. Metaphorically, literally, Damen had experienced it all and knew firsthand. Sometimes you managed to catch yourself, just in time. Sometimes you crashed. 

It was what Damen thought for the entire duration of the day, and subsequently into the next one. Through a buzzing dinner with problems brought to him that he paid half his attention to, a restless count that led to an even more restless sleep. Damen was up and awake long before the morning alarm, and he’d spent more energy in the showers looking around with a single-minded drive than he did bathing. 

Damen was unhinged by the time the free block came round. He felt ready to hurdle through the entire prison and everyone in it. The places they were allowed access to – and those that they weren’t - were rather limited, and it didn’t take long until Damen found him. Seated at a circular table with two other men, each one with at least forty years on Laurent. Damen had heard a collection of gullible comments when it came to the elderly in prison. How adorable it was, how gentle and out of place they looked, a safe crowd to cling to. The way Damen saw it, they’d either done something bad enough in their youth that they were still serving time or they’d done something objectively deplorable at such an old age. As far as Damen was concerned they were not to be underestimated, and it came as no surprise that Laurent was getting in their good graces.

He stopped in front of the table. There was a chessboard in the middle, a scatter of black and white figures mixed across the squares and showing an ongoing game. They looked up at the intrusion; one man’s fingers pinched around the Queen, and then resumed what they were doing without another care. Laurent was the only one who hadn’t looked down.

“Get up,” Damen said.

Laurent’s arms were crossed against his stomach. The lights above his head seemed to be seconds away from blowing out. The table was filthy and the bottom of it was covered in chewed up gum, and yet he sat there with the poised ease of someone lounging on a chair on the Ellosean beach. 

“Is it already lunch?”

“Laurent.” Damen had very little patience. He wanted – he didn’t know. A conversation, maybe. All he knew for certain was that he wasn’t going to tiptoe around Laurent or just continue to trudge around, pretending like nothing had happened. Laurent could pretend behind Damen’s back. He should be used to that.

Laurent blinked. “Are you going to throw me over your shoulder if I don’t?”

“Are you going to pretend like you won’t like it?” Damen said.

One man made his move. The other cursed, succinctly, waving his hand in a cutting motion as he leaned back in a slump. Damen waited, unmoving, and it was a few seconds before he simply grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him up that Laurent got up himself.

Damen didn’t speak as he walked, knowing Laurent would follow behind him. He wouldn’t have gotten up if he hadn’t planned to. He knew that the kitchen would be empty; the inmates on staff wouldn’t show up for at least an hour to get the next meal going, and he knew from Pallas which guard would be on rotation there, if any. Chelaut was fine, or at the very least bribable. Worst comes to worst, Damen had some money dropped into his account. There were bigger things to work around.

Like what exactly he was doing. He didn’t know if to say he was acting on impulse, not when it had been brewing for what was a day but really felt like years. He didn’t think, just pulled doors open and crossed halls and tried to come to terms with the fact that it was really Laurent walking behind him.

He even recognized his _footsteps._ Damen could probably close his eyes and identify if it was Laurent walking towards him by the way his feet shuffled alone. He clenched his teeth, pushing the next door open with both hands. 

Laurent didn’t say a word as they entered the kitchen. Emptiness surrounded them, enough vacant room for an entire crew to walk around each other as they worked, and it made the room feel even larger. Damen looked from the steel countertops covered in crates from Akielos Produce, to the sinks, to the door they’d come in from before making for the wide doored pantry entrance. 

It was dark when the door shut behind them, and Damen used the short time that his eyes needed to adjust to center himself. He was here, with Laurent, alone. Not much unlike the previous day, but this time it was completely Damen’s decision, his doing. Three years had gone by since he’d looked into Laurent’s eyes and heard his voice, and now for the second time in two days he was close enough to touch with no one around to see.

“All right,” Laurent said. “You have me here.”

Damen didn’t respond. He looked at his neck, thinking of his fingers on it, the way they’d wrapped around the unblemished skin with the surety of hands that knew how Laurent liked to be touched. Sometimes Laurent liked pressure, the tiniest bit with his thumbs that turned his kisses needy and breathless. Most of the times Damen would feel that regain of breath against his lips in ripples as he kissed the skin and felt Laurent tremble against him.

“Damen.” 

“Stop talking,” Damen said.

Laurent gave him a look, one that was as knowing as it was grating. “Did you just bring me here to look at me?”

“Maybe,” Damen said. The pantry was large but so was he; there wasn’t much space between them, and Laurent’s back was already against the wall. “Maybe I just want to understand how you’re actually here.”

“We’ve already had this conversation.”

“Can you give one straightforward answer?” Damen demanded. “Can you answer _one_ question without trying to throw me for a loop?”

“You didn’t ask me a question,” Laurent said. His voice was relaxed, what could be seen of his posture in the unlit closet unfazed. He wanted to change that. “And I’ll remind you, _you_ dragged me away from everyone else and into here. I haven’t approached you once.” 

He was right. Damen realized that, sullenly, though not without some frustration. Since the day Laurent had arrived it was Damen who had continued to approach him without even thinking about it. It was like he was premeditatedly operating on strings, and he supposed that in a way he was. Laurent was always the one pulling the strings, and Damen didn’t know how to _cut them._

The air was clammy. It made him feel like they were standing closer together, sharing the same limited oxygen.

“If you ask me,” Laurent said, and Damen saw it. That slightest bit of tension, hidden in the set of his shoulders. Only noticeable if you knew Laurent, if you knew his body. “You’re the one who’s looking for a game.”

Damen grabbed him by the shoulders. Not hard, not squeezing, just enough that he could feel the muscles coil under him, could show Laurent that he could feel it.

He heard Laurent’s breathing change as he slid his hands down his sides, the gritty material of his clothing rough against his hands. He knew if he touched Laurent’s wrists his pulse would be beating rabbit fast, and he felt just that as he took both in his grasp and pressed them into the wall.

His own breathing changed. It felt longer between each attempt, more effort going behind each one. Laurent’s eyes were raised as Damen tightened his hold and ground his nails in, wanting him to feel it. He was standing closer, wanting him to feel that too. Maybe he did want to play a game.

Laurent said, “Well?” 

Damen kissed him without preamble. What might have once been slow and careful was now replaced with something more vehement, more direct that Laurent had been showing him with his sly looks and underhanded comments. He pressed Laurent into the wall with his weight and made him take all of it. He didn’t bother to hold himself back like me might with someone less – everything. Someone who couldn’t handle Damen the way Laurent could. 

And Laurent yielded to it, the way Damen knew he would. He waited for any hint of a spasming motion against his grip, any sign that he wanted to be released, but it never came. The only change was the parting of his lips, and the minor sound of a gasp as Damen switched his grip and pressed it above his head.

It only took one of Damen’s hands to take hold of Laurent’s slender wrists, and he wrapped it around them with ease as he pinned them together and took his chin with his now freed hand. Damen tilted Laurent’s head to the side, some sense of urgency to it as he groaned from the feel of Laurent’s lips sliding against his own.

Laurent was panting as Damen pulled away. His chest was expanded from the way his arms were pulled back, pressing him even closer to Damen. Damen remembered that helpless sound all too well. He remembered what incentive it could be to try to increase it, and he let any reservations he should have from that reminder slide away as he made to work on the buttons of Laurent’s jumpsuit.

It meant letting go of him. Laurent could push him away if he wanted to. He could probably rip Damen’s fingers off if he wanted to, let alone remove himself and leave the situation. Damen knew that, and he watched as Laurent pressed his palms to the wall and tilted his head back. 

“Did you need assistance?” Laurent asked as Damen’s fingers slipped over the second button, sweat slick and clumsy with arousal. The fact that his voice was only a little labored was just as annoying as his comment.

“Shut up,” Damen said. “Shut up. Stop trying to control everything,” he said, before grabbing the fabric and pulling it apart in one yank.

The buttons were the snap version. It was mindlessly easy to take them apart in that way, but the motion still seemed to get more of a reaction out of Laurent than anything else he’d done. He spread the fabric open and pushed it down Laurent’s arms, and the undershirt he wore was so thin that it almost felt like skin as Damen pressed his hands to his abdomen, feeling him shiver. 

“Is this you taking back control?” Laurent said, but the worlds trailed off, almost unnoticeably as Damen moved his hands up his chest. His nipples were hard; Damen could feel it under the pads of his fingers. His cock was hard against his thigh. Damen bit at his neck as he rubbed his own cock against Laurent’s stomach.

It was like the adrenaline from his past life. Car chases under endless stars, risky conversations with high society entrepreneurs who were over the moon with excitement to invest their money in all of Damen’s grand, upcoming plans. Every fight, every casino they were sweeping and table that they were scheming. All of it wired up and infused into that moment, making his blood pump and rush all the same.

They were scrambling. Their hands tangled as they pushed the jumpsuit down his body in a tangle of fabric. The way their mouths slanted together was messy and graceless. Damen was struck by everything he wanted to do, and that vexed him on an irrational level. He was angry with Laurent for causing this, for making him second guess everything, and he was angry with himself for how much he missed this. The curve of Laurent’s hipbones beneath his palms and the way Laurent looked from this angle, peering down at him.

Laurent’s eyelids lowered. “I see you still like being on your knees.”

“I see you still talk when you’re nervous.” 

He said it with his fingers in the waistband of his underwear. Damen was on the ground with his neck craned back, not looking away as he pulled it down Laurent’s legs. He knew how he looked to Laurent, how he would look to anyone who might have walked in. Eager, wanting. He was. He opened his mouth and laved at the side, and when Laurent’s jaw clenched he did it again, slower. 

They were in a prison. They were in prison because of Laurent, always being watched by guards and inmates and thousands of prying eyes, any of which could walk in at any moment and see Damen kneeling, desperate to suck his cock. They didn’t matter, not now. All that mattered was steady, impossible Laurent, always so intent on seeing how far he could take Damen. Damen wanted to see Laurent desperate too, like he once was for him. Let him see how poised he could be with his cock in Damen’s mouth. 

It was criminal, how right it felt. To take Laurent down as far as he could go and to hear that small, broken sound that he made like it was yanked out of him. Damen focused on all of it greedily, dizzy with how much it felt like coming back to himself. It was his most primal version, the one that was attuned to every one of Laurent’s reactions and thrived on them, registering that over things like sore knees and a roughened throat. There was just Laurent; the taste of him on his tongue, the fullness in his hands as they ran up the backs of his thighs and felt the firmness of his ass. Damen pulled him forward, and the jerk of Laurent’s hips into his mouth caused Damen to gag around him in a muffled sound.

Damen heard the dull noise of the back of Laurent’s head hitting the wall as he pulled off, out of breath and ragged. He wanted to pull Laurent down and have him taste himself on Damen’s tongue. He settled on pressing his mouth to the skin on the inside of his shaky thighs, then the spot behind his balls that made Laurent moan when he probed with his tongue. There wasn’t a place on Laurent’s body that Damen hadn’t tasted before, and he’d have him there as well soon. 

He took Laurent in his throat again in one long slide. If he wasn’t holding Laurent in place he’d be taking his own cock in his hand, bringing himself off at Laurent’s feet. Laurent could direct him, he could push a hand into Damen’s hair and tug – Damen focused on the friction of his mouth as he thought of it, the sting and the direction, guiding his head up and down. A hand fell against the wall with the faraway, dreamlike sound of Damen’s own name as Laurent shuddered beneath his hands.

Damen’s own legs were unsteady when he wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand. He licked the saltiness on his lips, waiting for Laurent to open his eyes. To cut the silence with his words and set the world right back on its axis, to remind Damen what his body was so conveniently forgetting.

Eventually, Laurent did open his eyes. His arms were at his sides as his gaze lowered, and then his body with it, and then he was straddling Damen’s waist as he pushed him onto to the filthy floor and pressed their mouths together. 

It felt too good for Damen to be stunned. He went with it, Laurent’s hands raking up his chest and his own winding around Laurent’s middle, too tight to allow Laurent any give. How long had he thought about this, Laurent pinning Damen down with an opposing confidence that Damen so rarely experienced? It came to him in a flash of yearning and self-hatred. He groaned, feeling Laurent squirm, and it was like a wave of that bitter loathing pulsed through him as he shoved Laurent off of him, thrilling him with the hard bang of Laurent’s back against the concrete.

Damen was on top of him in a breath, Laurent’s fingers tugging at his hair as he pulled Damen’s head down. Damen ground their hips together, sucking a mark beneath Laurent’s jaw. He wanted Laurent to be forced to see it every day until it faded, to touch his bruised skin and remember that Damen had had his way with him. He kept his face pressed like that, speaking incoherencies into his skin as he rutted Laurent into the ground. 

It would have been nothing with anyone else. Not nearly enough to get Damen off since he’d been a boy, gangly and awkward, and inexperienced enough to be turned on by anything. But Laurent was a man, and he took it like he needed it just as much, and Damen was hot for it like this. He thrust his cock against the hardness of Laurent’s body as Laurent’s nails dug into his nape, and it was with the threat of breaking skin and Laurent’s earlobe between his teeth that he lost himself to it all.

When Damen finally came back to himself it was in stages, like a hungover reflection of a night full of mistakes. It hit him in waves and washed over him in a sweetened sort of horror. His face was pressed so tightly into Laurent’s neck that he thought his teeth might leave marks, and his arms were wound around him in a vise like disentangling wasn’t an option. He could feel the pounding of Laurent’s heart.

Damen reacted violently, pushing off and away so rapidly that he might have thought Laurent had kicked him if Laurent’s body wasn’t so limpid on the ground. He looked sinfully disheveled, his cheeks pink and his glazed eyes up towards the ceiling, and it wasn’t long before Damen realized his clothing were still undone. He jolted again, turning away, and the impulsive reaction seemed to be all Laurent needed to snap right back to his insufferable self.

“Nothing you haven’t already seen,” Laurent said, but it was accompanied by the continuous sound of buttons snapping into place. Damen braced his arms on the shelf in front of him as he counted out his breaths. 

“You can turn around now.” He could tell from Laurent’s voice that he was standing as well.

Damen spoke into his forearm. “I don’t need your permission.”

“No,” Laurent said. “But it seems that you need my warning.”

Damen turned. It was unbelievable how Laurent could do that, how he could pull himself back in a matter of seconds and remove all traces of whatever it was he’d been doing, how he could make it seem like Damen had imagined the entire thing. He couldn’t trust the same for himself.

Damen stayed on his side of the pantry. It wasn’t saying much considering it was about the size of their cells, but it still gave him some semblance of distance. He focused on that small bit of comfort as he said, calmly, “I can’t stand you.”

Lucid eyes peered back at him. “Can’t you.”

Damen didn’t think he would ever get used to the effect Laurent had on his temperament. It was like tossing a match onto a line of gasoline. He felt it run up his arms and burn in his chest, tensing his neck like he’d reached across the closet and strangled Damen with his eyes. _I hate you,_ Damen wanted to say. But. _But._

He turned for the door, leaving Laurent behind to manage his own way out and back to wherever they were supposed to be. He’d come for resolution and was leaving with more ambivalence than anything else, but was irate to know that most of that was targeted towards himself. He should have known. He _had_ known, but he’d tried to convince himself otherwise, had tried to ignore the ugly truth. There was no way him and Laurent were going to be thrown back together without colliding. The two of them didn’t exist together, they existed within each other. And Damen was a fool for thinking something as feeble as time and pain would change that.

Prisons were never quiet. There was always background noise filtering through the cracks and playing in the background like static, a constant reminder of where you were. Even at nights when the cell doors rolled closed and the lights went down, there was the shuffle of guards feet and the jingle of keys, the click of a flashlight shining on your sleeping face when you were trying to seek reprieve from the day. It had never bothered Damen, especially not after spending a few trips in solitary confinement. Damen had quickly taught himself how to survive that particular kind of torture, but he would still take shouts and threats and the ever-present blaring of the alarm over the hole. 

It was particularly noisy by the phones that afternoon. Each one was taken with a restless line forming behind them, men kicking at walls or pushing their hands in their pockets, or seeing how far they could antagonize a loitering guard. Damen tried to block everything else out, but it was particularly difficult when the entire crowd was simmering with impatience.

Fortunately for Damen, he was louder. “Do you know when Kastor will be back?”

“No,” Jokaste said. “He doesn’t normally give me time estimates when he goes out.”

Damen was standing with a palm pressed to the wall, leaning his weight forward and keeping his head lowered. He didn’t care if anyone saw him, he just didn’t like looking at these surroundings when he spoke with family. 

He thumbed at a flake of chipped paint. “How is he?”

“Oh, you know.” He heard the tap shut off, her voice coming in clearer. “He’s your brother.”

“Are you complaining about how my brother’s been treating you?” Damen asked, switching the phone to his other ear and letting it dangle from loose fingers. 

“Are you offering to take his place, if I was?”

He wasn’t. Damen was about as disinterested in Jokaste now as he had been years ago when they’d first met. She was beautiful, and exciting in a certain way, and Damen was confident she would have been a great catch if he’d been interested in pursuing that with her, but he just – wasn’t. He wasn’t even sure why not, she had plenty of the attributes that caught his eye, but he’d looked at her and felt nothing more than the amount of appreciation that it took for her to stand out to him. Beyond that, not much else. He’d thought that that sort of companionship just wasn’t something that spoke to him, which was fine. He was plenty satisfied with the life he’d lived thus far. 

This was all, however, not long before he met Laurent.

“Just say the word,” Damen said, now. “I’ll rough him up when I see him.”

_He needs to visit more for you to see him._ It wouldn’t surprise Damen for Jokaste to say that.

Instead he heard something heavy get set down, and then the sink was running again. It was followed by the rhythmic sounds of a knife against a cutting board. “Did you just call to speak with him?” 

Damen hadn’t really called for anything in particular. He was just checking in, mainly. He wasn’t particularly hoping it would be her that picked up. He thought of how to say that, and then found himself distracted by the inmate two phones down who was doing nothing to conceal the conversation he was having with whoever was on the other end of the line. His finger was looped tight around the cord, talking freely as if he were in the comfort of his own home. He was, transparently, trying to prove something.

“Knock it off, Chauvin,” Makedon said. He looked bored above all, though Damen knew from previous experiences that he wouldn’t hesitate to take the phone from his hand and slam it shut unceremoniously if he didn’t tone it down. 

Damen turned, facing Torveld instead as he leaned his right shoulder against the wall. Torveld wasn’t particularly subtle about his pursuits, but he wasn’t tasteless either. 

“Damen.”

Damen cradled the phone between his cheek and shoulder. “Sorry,” he said, trying to recall what they were talking about. “How’s the baby?”

There was soft music playing like she had turned the radio on, or had entered a new room. Classical, maybe. On his end, a series of expletives that were followed by a bark of laughter. 

“Euandros is nearly three,” she said. The ice in her voice thawed, just a little, in that way it only did when she spoke about her child. “He’s not a baby anymore.”

Damen smiled a half smile. She and Kastor had named him after their grandfather; something Damen knew would have pleased their dad, even if he wouldn’t have shown it. Jokaste had offered to send him progression pictures every so often, but Damen had told her not to. He didn’t want it floating around in a place like this. And truthfully, Damen just wasn’t that sentimental. 

“And he’s doing well,” she continued, when Damen didn’t speak. “What you’d expect from this age.”

Damen, who didn’t know what to expect from that age, nodded his head and remained silent. He watched a group of ants run by his boot and into a crack in the wall. 

“And you?” she asked. “How are you?”

Damen rubbed his fingers against the line of his jaw. “What you’d expect.”

“I wasn’t referring to the prison meal du jour.” Her voice was limpid again. 

“Delicious,” he said. “If you were wondering, anyway.”

“You know exactly what I’m asking about, Damen.”

A countless number of insects were squashed as Damen’s foot jerked forward, his toe hitting the wall. He braced his hand on the phone base. “How do you know about him?”

“I work in a courthouse,” she replied. The irony of her profession given what both her lover and his brother were affiliated with was still not lost on him. “I hear things. Specifically, things about a long awaited sentencing, packaged and sent right to your doorstep.” 

He was certain she felt some satisfaction in catching him off guard, but he didn’t have the mind to think of that. He was too preoccupied in the way his body reacted like it was conditioned. The insinuation alone was enough to make him feel like he’d just gotten finished with a hundred pushups. 

His fingers were rapping against the phone. “Are you also going to tell me not to do something stupid?”

A pause. Not long, but enough for Damen to briefly think that she had disconnected, his time up. But then her voice came, as smooth and refined as ever.

“Damen,” she said, the line scratching. “You and I both know you’re going to do whatever you want.”

Laurent wondered what sort of responses he would have received if he’d asked someone what to expect of prison. Someone who’d been in for a while and sought to offer comfort. _It’s bad,_ they would say. _Awful. But it gets better with time._ Or the popular, _You get used to it._

Laurent wasn’t so sure of that. Surely he would adjust, the way you did with anything in life. Adaptability was a carefully honed skill, and an essential one if you were going to live large. He was learning the rhythm of things. He generally knew what to expect, or at least how to acclimate to what was unexpended. It wasn’t as if he was someone who’d spent his entire life in cozy, pampered circumstances, but he sincerely doubted that anything here could be described as _better._

It was almost comical. The general idea was that it was a place of punishment and repenting, but there was far more crime inside these gates than there was in the outside world, where they’d all done whatever had sent them here to atone. It wasn’t too surprising; no one threw a bunch of criminals into a pen and expected them to twiddle their thumbs or play nice, but the paradox still offered a bit of dry amusement, and you had to take these things when you could.

Laurent wasn’t a saint. Truly, he wasn’t. He was here, after all, and he hadn’t even been caught for half of his offences. And while he liked to consider himself desensitized to most harsh realities (or at the very least, resigned), there were still various certainties that he didn’t quite relish. Seeing an inmate move with his head down and an aura that was all too familiar. Not enough seconds passing before a guard came down the same way, hand still on his belt buckle. To lock eyes, and then pretend like you hadn’t.

It threatened to take his appetite at times, robbing him of food that tasted like slop and chewed like rubber between his teeth. His spoon rolled around his tray as he put his attention elsewhere, beyond the boy three cells down who cried every night or the blood and vomit he’d seen splattered on the shower wall that morning. Sometimes he let himself be carried away by sweet, illicit things. Other times, like now, he let conversation roll over him. That was usually safer.

The prison was overcrowded and the table was more than packed, but there were only a few inmates sitting around him that Laurent could say that he relatively knew, beyond a name or a work assignment he’d seen them on. Orlant was a little rough around the edges, all wide shoulders and bulk. He seemed to get along with the posse he surrounded himself with, a feel of like-minded comradery even about him, though it didn’t go over Laurent’s head that he tended to only surround himself with Veretians. It was the opposing groups that he passed an abhorring eye over and made snide comments about, more often than not to their faces. More than once, Laurent had seen him need to be talked down from a fight. 

Laurent’s elbows rubbed with the men on either side of him. One of them leaned into him, edging close like he was passing something under the table, but when Laurent glared it was to see that it was just another inmate joining them. Ancel, setting his tray in the spot across from Orlant and swinging his legs over the bench. The entrance was in Laurent’s line of sight, if he’d been watching he would have seen him come in alone, get his tray alone and approach their table like the seat was reserved for him. He didn’t seem to notice the way multiple pairs of eyes were on him as he did. Or he didn’t mind it. 

“Are you lost?” An inmate named Jeurre, or something to that effect. 

Ancel smoothed his hair down one of his shoulders. “Don’t think so.”

“Children’s table is over there.” Orlant nudged his chin to the side. He broke a cracker between his fingers. “The men are sitting here.”

“I know.” Sliding his finger out of his mouth, “that’s why I’m here.”

Laurent tapped his thumb on the line of his tray, listening. He didn’t think Orlant had much of a problem with Ancel. He was probably bored, and posturing a little bit. But Ancel stirred Laurent’s interest. He was borderline rude and usually annoying, but Laurent liked him nonetheless. If he was afraid he didn’t show it, and he had a quality about him that reminded Laurent of somebody who didn’t need rules to play a game, just an end goal. 

“Let him stay,” Laurent said. 

“Wait.” This coming from Lazar, two seats down and slanting towards them. “Is this why you’re holding out on me?”

“Yes,” Laurent said. “That’s it.”

“A word of advice,” Ancel was looking at Laurent as well. “The whole ‘too stuck up to fuck’ thing only makes people chase you more.” He paused, touched his spoon to his lips, leaned in. “Unless that’s your angle?”

“Noted,” Laurent said.

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“That wasn’t really a question.”

Another tray rattled against the table, because there were apparently no other available ones, and Laurent looked to the sound to see Jord take a newly vacated spot. He didn’t say much in the way of greeting, but he glanced around the group before starting on his food.

“You’ve got – “ Orlant ran his thumb along the side of his face before motioning to Jord’s, raising an eyebrow. He had two gashes on his cheek, fresh looking, but was otherwise unruffled.

“Chauvin,” was all Jord said. It was an indifferent grunt. That morning on the way to work, Jord and Laurent had crossed paths with Chauvin and Touars, and Laurent hadn’t missed the slur or the returning bump against Chauvin’s shoulder.

Jord, Laurent was learning, was a key example of possessing more than what met the eye. He’d picked up enough from conversations and insults to know that he’d grown up underprivileged, and Laurent knew firsthand how that could teach someone to defend themselves. He spoke with a pragmatic sort of tone that felt more like realism rather bravado. Laurent knew the manner of a man who kept a lot boiling under the surface, but he also saw a person who had his temper mostly in check, unlike most of the men in his close circle. Laurent thought that he might have even been someone he’d have kept close in the real world, where every choice mattered.

More than once, Laurent also thought about the few times he’d seen Jord with Auguste, too young then for an introduction to have been made. He would never ask Jord about it, so he supposed he would never know.

“Jord here likes pretty things,” Lazar said, leaning in and taking the piece of dessert off Jord’s tray. Jord took it back. “Maybe he’ll fuck you, Ancel.”

_Pretty._ With the slender body, bright green eyes and long hair that either fell down his back or was in a different style braid every day, the word seemed appropriate. Laurent didn’t feel even a flicker of interest, but still wondered if Lazar was entirely off, going by the way Jord’s eyes barely scanned Ancel before returning to his meal.

Ancel noticed too. His eyebrows etched together as he spun his fork between his fingers. It might have been the first time his pouty lips made a flat line. Laurent couldn’t help but feel a flash of sympathy as he watched him mull over his frustration. He wondered if it was Jord’s attention he wanted specifically, or just attention in general. 

“I don’t know, Red,” Orlant leaned forward on forearms, picking at his food with his hands. ”Maybe you don’t have the lure you seem to think you do.”

His milky cheeks stained pink with color. Still, his expression remained firm and his posture straight. “Who said I’m after any of you?”

“Don’t worry,” Laurent said. “If you’re hot to find someone to fuck, a lack of recourses is the least of your problems.”

“Maybe I have higher ambitions.” 

“This is prison,” Jord said, flatly. “How high exactly can you aim?” 

It wasn’t a challenge. At least, Laurent didn’t think it was, but Ancel appeared to have taken it as such. His vexed demeanor seemed to melt away as he moved back enough to see over rows of heads, his palms flat on the table. It was almost inspiring. His eyes roamed, not too long, and then he said, calmly, “him.” 

Curiosity piqued despite himself. Laurent swiveled around to look, multiple other people shifting as well. He wasn’t quite sure what to expect. He’d seen Ancel hanging around Louans and Rouart in the rec room, and he’d caught him eyeing Nikandros across the cafeteria, always deep in conversation. Even Damen, once or twice. More than once or twice. The repellant food churned in Laurent’s stomach as he raised his eyes, quickly to land on CO Berenger. 

Lazar burst out with what sounded like a stunned laugh, just as Orlant’s fist hit the table. Ancel didn’t seem discouraged by the reaction, or deterred. If anything he was egged on. His arms crossed in front of him, his eyes scrolling up the guard’s lean body and back down.

Berenger was – an unexpected target. He was attractive in that nine-to-five sort of way, and probably the most decent person to step into this prison. He was about the last person Laurent would guess to be sought after by Ancel, for reasons that went far beyond legality. 

“Berenger,” Orlant said, like he was clarifying where they were all obviously gawking. “The one who looks like an accountant?” 

Ancel hummed, pushing his fingers into his hair. 

“A word of advice,” Lazar mimed, reaching for his drink. “Berenger is as straight edge as they come. He’ll probably piss his pants if an inmate even looked in his direction for too long. Good luck getting a conversation.”

Ancel smiled. It was entirely disingenuous, but the way his eyes lit up like sparkling emeralds made Laurent think those were his favorite kinds of smiles. 

“You don’t know what I got caught for.” He placed his cup, cutlery and dirty napkin on his tray. “Or what I didn’t,” he added, before removing himself from the table and turning on his heel. 

Laurent watched to see where he would go. He expected to see him make his way for the wall Berenger was posed against, but instead followed the straight line he made for the garbage can and then the door, only stopping to stack the empty tray on his way out. Beside him, he heard Orlant mutter, “that kid is gonna cause a riot.” 

The doors pushed open again, fast and synchronous. It happened often, every few minutes during a busy meal. The only reason Laurent saw was because he was already looking, and he’d imagine the same was for Lazar who said, laughing, “think he’ll compete with Damen?”

The doors slammed shut. Laurent heard them like they were clamping around his ears, echoing in his head. He faced the table to where they spoke, something that made Jord smirk behind his wrist and a nameless inmate point and nod. Laurent absorbed none of it. He couldn’t, not when his thoughts were tinged with something red hot and suffocating. 

He’d spent the whole of both nights lying in his bunk and looking at the one above him, trying to slow his heartbeat to something rational. The first time could be chalked up to a mistake, a helpless slipup that was out of his control, and something he would never do given a clear head and focus. The second didn’t leave him so unscathed, because it wasn’t even over before he was thinking of having this again.

Laurent wasn’t as strong as people perceived. 

He was in all the ways that commonly mattered. He could think himself out of most situations. He could survive without a roof over his head and keep himself fed off of swiped wallets and charmed conversations. He could take himself from that state, and gradually move his way up to more money and respect than any one person actually needed, only requiring just a few unlikely acquaintances and more than a few unlawful methods. 

It didn’t matter. Not in the grand scheme of things. How could it, when years of resolve and self-conviction crumbled to nothing because all it took were gentle brown eyes and the touch of familiar hands to make Laurent feel like he had finally come back to life? 

It was despairing. It was galling, and a big problem, and a host of other things that Laurent was absolutely going to contemplate another time. He had literally nothing but time, and he was more than certain that he was going to berate himself for this later. He was fine with that, just like he was telling himself that he was fine with this.

(He was. He was guiltily, inexplicably, more than fine with it.)

It had been unsurprisingly easy to get Damen where he wanted him. Laurent didn’t know if it made him ache more that Damen had hardly changed, or that Laurent could still predict him like no time had passed. He’d caught his eye, held it, and it was clear that they both knew how the altercation was going to end before he’d even approached him. He couldn’t quite figure who that said more about.

Going through the prison was a blur. One of Laurent’s highest priorities had been to find places of seclusion. Survival had always been the most important objective, and he knew he had no chance of doing so if he didn’t allow himself the rare but imperative occasions where he could just _be._

Not every spot was as glamorous as the last, that much was expected. He much preferred the library or the yard, or even his cell when Lazar wasn’t around. But the closet door shut, and Laurent turned to the only other person there, and it no longer mattered. 

Damen said, “What.”

He stood with his back to the slot of a window behind him, a narrow rectangle that let just enough light in the room to cut against his shoulder. His neck was straight, unmoving as he stared at Laurent.

Laurent felt his own lips curl up. He had to smile. It had been so long since someone had shown their displeasure with him to his face. It had been just as long since Laurent had been around someone who knew him well enough to feel anything real for him, even if it wasn’t necessarily positive. 

It was true that to be alone and to be lonely were two different things. It just didn’t make a difference to someone like Laurent, who had long been both.

Laurent dropped his hand from the doorknob, but he kept his arms behind his back. He remained leaning against the door, watching Damen watch him, feeling as his heart slammed against his ribcage.

“Guess,” Laurent said.

Damen didn’t like that. His eyebrows made a straight line, his mouth following, and the sight of it sent another pang through Laurent’s chest. He knew, and had thought of nearly nothing else for so long, but it startled him how much he missed this. Banter, reactions. Challenging Damen was like a private thrill of his, and it was surreal beyond belief that it was happening again.

“Oh, come on,” Laurent said. He crossed the small place, an untied lacing dragging against the pavement. Damen watched the way the black string slid, and when he pulled his attention away it was with an unhurried raise of his eyes that warmed Laurent’s neck. “Where’s your sense of humor?”

“I guess I’m not seeing the joke,” Damen said. His arms hugged against his front. Even under the uniform Laurent could see the way it clung to his biceps, the orange fabric that tugged against his shoulders shabby with wear and strain.

He didn’t sound angry, really. Agitated, maybe. Probably exasperated. Probably both. 

Laurent couldn’t begin to guess how Damen was feeling, what he’d _been_ feeling towards him. The relative idea he had wasn’t pleasant, and while Laurent deserved it, it didn’t make it any easier to swallow. Sometimes on his worst nights when he’d been feeling particularly masochistic, he’d imagine the height of what Damen had felt for him, once. His most honest smile that only Laurent got to see, uniquely different from all the others. The way he’d wrap his arms around Laurent in the morning where he’d wake up to find him still in bed, pulling him as close as he could and winding their feet together which felt so comfortably intimate that it always made Laurent blush. The successful nights where their spirits were high and Damen would have too much to drink, and he’d lean his full weight against Laurent and tell him things that would make even Laurent too bashful to look at him.

And then Laurent would reverse all of those memories and forcibly remind himself that that magnitude was how Damen felt about him now, and it would hurt so much that he thought it would suffocate him.

Laurent knew from experience how Damen processed pain. Or rather, how he didn’t process it. He didn’t quite know how – and that was when he allowed himself to even acknowledge it – and so it often came out in other ways. A punch to a wall. General disassociation from the matter. Blowing the person you hate in a kitchen pantry in a prison.

Laurent wasn’t fooling himself. He knew that that conversation wasn’t one that Damen was capable of having yet, and so he was taking all of his tangled up frustration out in a different way. But he was still here, voluntarily, and that had to count for something.

And if it didn’t, then Laurent wasn’t big enough to give this up. Not yet.

He reached a hand out and touched Damen’s chest, wanting to see how he would accept the touch. He didn’t flinch, though Laurent saw the slightest curl of his lip as it trailed higher towards the thin skin of his collarbone. Laurent felt the fragility of it under his fingertips, and it amazed him that any parts of Damen could feel so breakable. 

Laurent lifted his eyes. He could hear the coyness of his voice as he said, “Don’t you want to?”

Damen could hear it too. He didn’t seem convinced. “To what,” he said. Pointed, like he was daring the crudity out of Laurent.

The tips of their boots touched as Laurent stepped into his space, wanting to press every part of him against Damen. He knew Damen wanted that too. It was in his eyes, in his breaths, in the way he could never hide the way he really felt. Especially not about Laurent

Laurent said, just as coy, “you don’t want to fuck?”

He wasn’t sure what exactly he was expecting. A warning grasp around his wrist, or to be pushed back like before, his back hitting the wall as Damen used his size to his advantage. What he wasn’t expecting was Damen’s hands at his sides, clutching him tight and pulling them flush together. It sent a thrill down Laurent’s spine and made his lips part in a silent gasp.

Damen’s expression could only be described as arrogant. It was a look that suited him. He seemed entirely pleased by himself, and even more so when his palms moved back and groped Laurent’s ass.

Damen’s lips just brushed against his ear. Laurent could feel the stirrings of his voice against the delicate skin as he said, “Are you going to ask nicely?”

Laurent’s eyes shut, just for a second. “Will you please stop talking?”

Damen’s lips were firm against his, and Laurent was nearly beside himself with how much this one thing threatened to rid him of all of his masks. He’d always loved kissing Damen, how it could make his legs weak all while making him feel powerful, desired. It was something Laurent never thought he would want, and now it made his hands just as clumsy and his head just as woozy as it had when he was eighteen, kissing some terrifying, beautiful stranger in a bar.

Laurent wound his arms around Damen’s neck, pulling him down and into his own kiss. He wanted to climb up Damen’s body and cling to him like that. He wanted to pull Damen’s clothing apart and dive into him, to insert himself there where he could hide forever in the place where his heart beat.

Laurent could feel Damen leading them backwards, and he went with it without question, not caring if they tripped over each other’s feet and ended up in a tangle on the floor. Damen’s hands didn’t stray from his backside and he preened at that, wanting Damen to take his fill of him. The backs of his knees hit something but he didn’t stop, nor did Damen when he shifted his hold, bent his knees and lifted Laurent onto a small table.

The slide of Laurent’s body caused something to move and topple onto the floor, scattering at their feet. It was the clattered noise and the risk of being found that caught Laurent’s hazy attention, but Damen grabbed his chin and pulled Laurent back against his mouth and Laurent didn’t care if the warden stormed in on them.

He didn’t know how long they kissed; long, familiar kisses that quickly made Laurent hard and desperate, ready to forgo all concepts of logic from their circumstance. He was tipped back from the way Damen was leaned over him, his legs lifted at his sides so that one boot was pressed flat to the table, his other wrapped around Damen’s middle.

Laurent could hardly hold himself up by the time Damen pulled away, reaching for the edge of the table and trying not to do something rash like demand he come back. Damen was exhaling hard, chest heaving breathes that hooded his eyes and roughened the way he looked at Laurent. Laurent needed it.

He took a step back, running the side of his wrist against his mouth like he was trying to wipe the taste of Laurent off his lips. It stung in his throat, but then Damen pinned him with the look that had gotten men to throw their arms up and get on their knees, and Laurent thought he might finally understand the lure. 

He reached into his pocket, never breaking his gaze from Laurent’s, and when his hand came out it was with slightly curled fingers and an expectant, weighted raise of his brow.

Laurent found himself mirroring the gesture, though his version came with a quickened pulse and a tightness in his stomach that he was almost certain showed on his face.

“You have lube,” Laurent said, surprised but relieved by the steadiness of his voice.

“Believe me,” Damen spread his arms on both sides of Laurent, making Laurent look up at him. “This is the least difficult thing to have snuck into a prison.”

“You carry lube around with you,” Laurent corrected. But he was reminded of Lazar’s earlier comment, delivered amongst laughter and knowing nudges, and jealousy burned so bright and hot that he had to look down. 

Damen was still hovering close. Mistaking Laurent’s envy for more false timidity, Damen brought a knuckle beneath his jaw and lifted Laurent’s head.

“You think,” the pad of his thumb touched Laurent’s bottom lip, “I haven’t been waiting for you to ask me to fuck you?”

Laurent’s fingers found their way into Damen’s collar about the same time Damen’s found their way into Laurent’s hair. Their kisses were open mouthed and without any reservation, and Laurent was unsure if he pushed off the table or if he was pulled. If it was him who turned himself around or Damen who did it, kicking his legs apart and pulling at his buttons. 

Laurent liked when Damen was gentle with him. More than liked it. Maybe it was the dissonance of someone like him treating Laurent like something rare and delicate. He didn’t know, but it was one of the few times Laurent felt as tender as Damen saw him.

But then there was this. An entire other side to Damen, one that would just as often come out and make Laurent feel like Damen wanted to tear through his flesh with his hands. His buttons were pulled apart in one full snap, Laurent’s jumpsuit shoved down his body carelessly as Damen bunched his fist into the loose fabric in the back and yanked. It tangled at Laurent’s arms, pulling them behind his back. 

Laurent was shivering by the time Damen’s own clothing had been adequately discarded. The closet was small and humid but Laurent’s body was still trembling, he thought Damen had to feel it when he dragged a palm up the side of Laurent’s thigh.

A hand came to the center of Laurent’s back, enough pressure applied that Laurent understood, but Damen was surprisingly measured in the way he pushed Laurent down until his front was flat against the narrow table. The surface was unexpectedly cold through the thin undershirt he’d kept on, and the temperature against his sensitive nipples caused him to gasp.

Somewhere in the darkness, a cap came off and fell to the floor. It rolled between them as the silence stretched. Laurent’s body tensed, his breaths stuck deep in his throat as Damen’s fingers trailed, dripping wet and slick against his skin. 

Laurent turned his head into his arm when Damen’s finger pushed in, biting down on his lip to keep everything in. It was nothing like opening himself, it was thicker and faster and _real_ – Damen’s palm was soothing down his side and he was stretching Laurent open so he could fuck him, and it was so much better than all those times Laurent tried to give himself this, because Damen was _here_. He didn’t need to picture him, to imagine that it was Damen readying Laurent with the urgency of someone who needed to be inside him, unable to hold back. It was Damen spreading him with one hand so he could slide in easier. Those were Damen’s fingers, curving inside him and making Laurent moan into his elbow.

“Come on.” Laurent heard himself speak, his face turned on its side. “Fuck me.”

Damen grunted behind him, deep in his throat. Laurent was unsure if it was appreciation or to quiet him, but then his hands were on Laurent’s lower back and he was holding Laurent down like that, and Laurent couldn’t stop himself from canting his hips up.

“Do it,” he said. “Damen. Come on, fuck me –“

And then Damen was inside him. It was all at once, and it was so much that Laurent’s mouth fell open, a sound coming out that he couldn’t recognize as his own. He thought he was shaking again. He couldn’t stop, and the way he readjusted his feet caused Damen to sink in further.

Damen groaned, more loud and careless than either of them could afford to be, but it still made Laurent’s cheeks flush and his cock throb. He clenched around him, knowing Damen would like that, needing to hear him again. He was shameless in how he rocked his hips back, inhaling sharply at the pressure.

“Laurent,” Damen groaned again, and it was almost too much to hear his name like that. Laurent shut his eyes, doing it again, and was rewarded with the feel of Damen’s large hands gripping against his sides and holding him in place. “You need to - stay still.”

It came out thick with effort. His voice was jagged with need, pulled tight and on the edge of restraint, and Laurent wanted to feel it snap. He wanted Damen to lose himself in him, to see if he remembered this, too.

“What,” he tried to sound blasé despite being minutes away from begging. “You can’t even fuck me properly anymore?”

They both knew it was a miserable lie. They were on the edge but Laurent was abandoned with it, unable to keep up some ruse when he’d been waiting so long. He wanted to always be like this; in Damen’s control and knowing he was half as wanting as Laurent was. He grappled for his thigh, determined. 

It earned him another low noise, deep and gnarled. It was followed by a sudden shift of his body that jolted Laurent against the table, causing his lashes to flutter with a whimper. Fingers dug hard into the flesh of his leg. Laurent knew what that meant – It was a warning. He licked at his dry lips, ready to demand for more when Damen finally gave it to him.

The table was small and weak with years of usage, Laurent could hear the creak of its legs and the sound it made each time it knocked into the wall and caused the shelf beside it to rattle. Damen was pushing into him in slow, long thrusts, Laurent could feel the full length of him moving inside him and he could hardly stand it, needing it more with each second. He was crazed, and remembered just how easy it was to become insatiable after this. He tried to move with him, to get a deeper angle, but Damen made a _tsk_ sound, bringing a quick slap down against the side of his thigh. Laurent whimpered again, half bitten into his arm. 

Damen leaned forward, covering Laurent with the full weight of his body and holding him down like that, keeping him confined. It changed the angle of penetration and the next time Damen thrust into him, Laurent’s legs buckled before he could stop himself.

“Like this?” Damen said, doing it again. It made Laurent think of the cocky look on his face. He was panting, ragged puffs of air as he drove his hips into Laurent and fucked him harder, building up a pace that made Laurent’s head feel light and his body ache with the need for release. 

The sound of it all was obscene. The impact that their bodies made, the utilities shaking and their own reactions. Ecstasy spiked hot inside him. Damen’s hand moved to clamp against his mouth and Laurent sunk his teeth into the skin, biting down hard and hearing Damen hiss behind him.

“Bitch,” Damen said, but the insult was saturated in heady pleasure. Laurent craned his neck back, moaning deliriously when Damen’s free hand wrapped around the head of his cock.

Laurent came all over his hand, his head falling dully against the table with Damen’s palm still covering his lips. He was stroking him through it, wet and sticky. Laurent whined in a muffled sound with half closed eyes when Damen pulled out of him, not having the energy to protest.

He remained like that, needing to feel like his head was back on his shoulders and his legs were steady again before he moved, before he could put the rest of himself back together. He felt, nonsensically, an irrational flutter of resentment that practicality had to take precedence here, and was aware of how absurdly he was feeling over Damen needing to finish in a more sensible way. 

Eventually, Laurent found his way back into his right mind. He had no notion of how much time there was left, and there was a mess on the table that he should probably take care of. It made him more flustered than he was willing to admit. He opted first to go about straightening himself out, lifting his jumpsuit up his legs and smoothing the front of his shirt down, leveling his breaths as evenly as possible. He slid his arms in and focused on snapping the buttons in place, starting at the bottom and working his way up. He was, throughout the process, aware of Damen’s silence.

When he turned, it was to find Damen equally redressed and mostly put back together, save for the look on his face that he always got after sex. It had always made Laurent shy. It was something in the eyes, hazy and replete, but it came off slightly different now that it was tinged in dislike.

“Well,” Laurent pushed his hair off his face. “That was fun.”

The look changed. Or maybe grew. Laurent wanted to tell himself that it didn’t matter, but of course it did. He didn’t know what to say to make the situation better – mainly because there was purely nothing _to_ say – and so he opted instead to go against his instincts and simply stop talking.

That seemed to be enough for Damen. His eyes roamed Laurent’s body, going down to the floor and making his way back up to his heated cheeks, and he breathed out a sound of hollow laughter that also came with a shake of his head, and then something else entirely. Something that was beyond Damen’s control, because it was just as beyond Laurent’s. 

“How are we back here?” Damen said.

Laurent looked back at him and thought, _because we’re inevitable._


	3. Chapter 3

Some habits were easier to fall into than others.

Damen had thought that once before. Patterns, old behaviors, they were all too easy to get sucked back into. He’d seen it happen to enough people around him with all different kinds of addictions. It was why he had fallen back into this, Damen told himself. It was why he was acting like he was twenty-one again, infatuated and unable to get enough. That was all this was: a bad habit that he had not yet learned how to shake.

Damen, as a rule, never bothered with drugs. Aside for not relishing the prospect of throwing his life away or letting himself slowly rot, he refused to hand himself over to something so insubstantial and allow it to have such control over him. But there was one fault in his self-imposed rule. One impossible, defying problem that had a way of sneaking in and fucking up every bit of self-preservation that Damen had constructed for himself.

Laurent was a drug of his own, in the least clichéd and most literal way. He was under Damen’s skin, in his veins, and no amount of logic seemed to combat the clutch that he had over Damen. He knew it was wrong. That _this_ was wrong, and that the instantaneous relief would only last so long, crushing him fast and hard after with reality. But he just _couldn’t stop_. Laurent was, unequivocally, out of his control. 

It was how Damen found himself pressing Laurent against a metal-corded wire fence, his fingers looped into the chain links above his head. In the library concealed by books, holding Laurent down against the gritty carpeting and rubbing his knee between Laurent’s legs. Once at the sound of voices trickling in through the shelves, he’d been tempted to back away altogether, farther than the guise of a cover required, and to leave Laurent unsatisfied and needy. A part of him liked the idea of that, to relish in the moment where Laurent would register the situation, and then the minutes where he could enjoy the effort Laurent would need to impose to get himself back under control, all while trying to look unaffected. The pink in his cheeks would linger the longest, his blue eyes hazy with faraway release.

When the footsteps had eventually dissipated, Damen still found himself molding his body against Laurent’s. 

It wasn’t that Damen feared people seeing him, or that he was unnerved by comments made to degrade him. People could fuck who they wanted and be who they wanted, the unsolicited opinion of self-important strangers meant very little to him. It just – he knew what people did here for amusement. He’d seen and heard the worst of it. Damen could handle himself with his eyes shut, but not everybody could. Or at least, they shouldn’t have to.

Discretion was better. It kept everything at bay, and served as a thin barrier between fantasy and reality. 

Damen found himself running through that philosophy in the showers that morning. Damen was a man who’d been around, and he knew firsthand that there were few places less pleasant than a communal shower in a men’s prison. The lack of upkeep and custodial attention was obvious, and the general depravity was a good representation of the overall prison atmosphere. The long lines led to an overly cramped area, the half hour of allotted hygiene time not nearly enough to compensate every block. The suffocating stench was something you never grew accustomed to. 

Heat clawed at Damen’s skin, the air around him thick and muggy with sweat and body odor. He could feel it running down the back of his neck as he messed with the weak spray of water, knowing it was futile. You were never really clean in prison.

Around him, he saw what looked like a collection of groupings picked up and thrown together. It was probably the one place that lacked any real kind of segregation. The bulk of it was made up of ribald comments, lewd and demeaning looks that Damen did his best to ignore so as not to spur himself into some kind of action. They weren’t turned on him, not realistically. But it was there. Larger men. Blustering men. Their eyes on targets or, more often, victims. Damen felt his teeth grind together. 

What was worse to look at was the other side of the coin, the ones on the receiving end. Damen could stomach leveling himself with the worst of them, he was itching for a reason to take a swing at someone, and if they were anywhere else he would jump at the chance. But it was the meek, docile ones. Submission was a curse in here. Trepidation rolled off them in an all too obvious way, and men could sniff out fear like a real thing, hounding at it like dogs. Damen felt restricted as he watched it unfold, day after day, like there was never a break from the chains holding him down.

There was a boy in the stall over from him. Damen could see him well over the thin, fraying curtain that separated them, stopping inches below his own chin. Damen had noticed him around before. He couldn’t be any older than eighteen, and just watching the way he held himself turned Damen’s stomach in knots. He was focusing more on hiding his body than watching his back, which was one of the dumbest mistakes he could make. There was no place here for modesty, and there were other priorities he should have on his mind.

Damen cleared his throat. He knew that the boy had heard it, and he knew that he wouldn’t ignore the obvious call for attention, intimately familiar with this subservient kind. He lifted his head and turned like he couldn’t help but respond to it, and while it was something that Damen might normally appreciate, he couldn’t think of a worse attribute for the boy to have here. 

“What’s your name?” Damen spoke as gently as he could while still being heard over everything else. He continued to wash himself, scrubbing a hand along his torso. 

The boy’s eyes followed the movement, along the lines of an inky black tattoo that predated his incarceration, and Damen could see him go pink to the tips of his ears. He was holding a small bar of soap, prone to slip at any moment from his shaky fingers. Damen waited.

“Erasmus.” He said it like it was a question. 

“Erasmus,” Damen repeated the Akielon name. He could feel time ticking away, he had approximately two minutes before he was ushered out of his stall and they all had around ten before the guards threw them out. “I’m Damen.”

Erasmus accepted the name with another flush, and a demure lowering of his eyes like understanding. It wasn’t what Damen had intended, and it certainly wasn’t the mode that he was trying to nurture in Erasmus. But time was precious, and this wasn’t the setting for that conversation. 

Damen wasn’t usually one to offer comfort, and given the delicate nature of the situation, he knew that soothing words weren’t the answer. He leaned his head under the spray and kept his body intentionally relaxed.

“Keep your showers as short as possible,” Damen said. He didn’t look away, knowing someone who required steady eye contact when he saw them. Sudsy water ran down the back of his head in rivulets. “And focus more on getting the job done than what others are seeing.” Behind them, plastic slide on shoes slapped against the wet floor. Erasmus looked like each sound was too loud for him.

“All right?” Damen probed.

“Hey.” The new voice was close and intruding. Damen looked behind his shoulder and saw Touars, a towel over his shoulder and his body otherwise bare. “If you two are gonna fuck, do it in the same stall so I can shower.”

Damen shut the water off. Before he could speak, Erasmus’ shook his head. “We – We weren’t –“

“ _We, we,_ ” Touars imitated, unwinding the towel and stepping forward. He waved a hand in a circle. “Let’s go, buttercup. Get the fuck out.”

Erasmus looked ready to fall over, and this wasn’t even close to the comments a face like that was going to start receiving. Outwardly defending him would be the wrong move, it would only make him more of a target for other people’s personal vendettas. Damen took a step forward, knowing it would redirect Touars’ attention onto him and away from Erasmus’ lithe body.

“That stall just opened,” Damen said, nudging his chin to the side. “And it has better water pressure.”

Touars didn’t look. He bounced his eyes back and forth between the two of them, landing on Damen with a careless grin. Damen narrowed his eyes. 

“Don’t worry,” Touars said, following it with a wink. “Ripe isn’t my thing.”

Damen waited for him to be out of sight and distracted by other inmates before he turned to face Erasmus, whose eyes were back on the drain between their feet. His curls were a wet mop on his forehead, water dripping down his nose.

They both needed to go. Damen reached over and turned Erasmus’ water off, keeping his hand there.

“You’re here,” Damen said, letting his eyes say what his words could not. “You’re brave.” 

It was unexpectedly sunny out that day. The temperature was warm for September and the sky was clear, a clean line of blue without any clouds to break the light. Damen had to squint his eyes to keep the brightness out, though his head was already lowered a bit more than the sun required as he embraced hands with another inmate, feeling a folded up hundred dollar bill fit into the crease of his palm. 

“We’re good,” Damen said, putting space between them.

The inmate still looked behind his shoulder. He watched as two other inmates crossed their path before looking at Damen expectantly. 

When Damen did nothing, the man lifted his shoulders. “Where’s my stuff?”

Damen straightened himself back to his regular height as he pushed his hand into his pocket. “The same place it always is,” he said, ignoring the narrowed eyes. “And you’ll get it the same time you always do.”

“Come on, man,’ he huffed. “I need it now, I told you, it can’t wait another week.”

Damen looked down his nose at him, unimpressed. He didn’t know what it was with people thinking their problems were his own, or that they interested him to begin with. He blew a rush of air out, looking around them and towards the bleachers at the far end of the yard.

“You can wait the usual time like everyone,” Damen said, conscious of his voice level. “Or I can keep this month’s payment and you can find your own connection.”

The inmate stared at him. Damen grinned back, lifting a hand towards the guard passing them.

“The other blocks don’t take well to defectors,” Damen said pleasantly. 

The inmate tutted under his breath, giving his head a shake before taking a step back. His hand was wrapped against the back of his neck, turning away with another muttered breath. He was ungrateful _and_ indignant. 

“A pleasure,” Damen said to his retreating back.

Damen waited for the inmate to be gone and out of his line of vision before leaning his entire body back on the old shed, closing his eyes. He let out another breath, slower this time, feeling the frenzy in his chest settle a bit with it. It was Nikandros who usually handled the finances of their business, Pallas being in charge of getting orders in and Damen the technicalities. But Nikandros was preoccupied with a black haired inmate who was new to their block, and Damen didn’t mind stepping in. He trusted Nikandros with it all, but it was good to have his own eye on things from time to time.

The length of the shed was long, though its panels were old and rickety and likely weren’t holding anything valuable. There wasn’t a part of the yard that the CO’s didn’t frequent, but it was the best spot of the entire pick that wasn’t in direct view of the towers up above them. Inmates came here for deals, or for privacy, or occasionally even a nap away from the noise. It never came as a shock to walk the perimeter and stumble across another inmate, which was why he didn’t flinch when he came face to face with Laurent.

It wasn’t even surprising that he was there of all people. Out of Damen’s life for three entire years, and then popping up at every corner. 

He was seated on the grass in a casual sprawl, one of his knees drawn up to his chest with the crook of his arm resting on top of it. He was looking up at Damen like he’d been expecting to see him, which he probably was, considering that he’d been here for the entirety of Damen’s deal. His fingers were close to his mouth, pinched around the middle of a hand rolled cigarette. 

It was one of Laurent’s worst habits, up there with him being an insufferable bitch. It wasn’t something that Damen would have expected from him given his need for control of all things, but he’d never shown any interest in quitting. Far be it from incarceration to be enough incentive. 

Damen couldn’t stand cigarettes. He still couldn’t smell the acrid scent without thinking of a blanket around pale shoulders and the spark of fire against the gray background of dusk. 

He pressed himself against the rough planks, using the surface as a brace as he slid himself down and settled himself in the spot beside Laurent, a few inches away. He stretched his legs out, making himself comfortable.

“Has anyone told you that will kill you?” Damen asked. _Besides me,_ he didn’t bother adding.

“Mine didn’t come with a warning label,” Laurent said, after the few seconds of pause in which he stared at Damen unblinkingly. He tapped the ash off with the edge of his finger, watching it fall. It grew silent.

The quiet was nice. He didn’t get that often, and Damen luxuriated in the temporary reprieve of tipping his head back and feeling the sun on his face. It was something he didn’t realize his missed so much until he was outside again, feeling it warm his skin.

He soon heard a slight rustling beside him, like fabric rubbing together. Damen opened one eye at it, expecting to see Laurent closer to him, but he’d only rearranged the way he was sitting so that both knees were tugged up against his stomach. He removed the cigarette between two fingers, blowing a line of smoke in Damen’s general direction. When Damen grimaced, he faced forward with a satisfied smile. 

“This is new,” Laurent said, after a beat. Their view was of a gate, the shed already at the far end of the yard without much space between it and the border. It was like looking at a screen that had long been shut off.

The most recent time they’d been alone, Damen had Laurent pressed against a wall with his fingers inside his mouth, Laurent’s own hand wrapped around Damen’s wrist. The memory was too close, too sharp, and Damen had to look away.

“Not that new,” Damen said, distracted. He wondered if Laurent was also thinking about the last time they’d fucked. If it was as good as he remembered, too.

He stopped himself. It was enough that Damen was letting this happen again, he didn’t need to fantasize about it when it _wasn’t_ , letting every moment be about Laurent. He rubbed his thumbs against his eyelids, wondering what he was even doing there.

When his hand fell away, Laurent was back to watching him. He looked like he had something he wanted to say, and Damen didn’t try to prompt him either way. Laurent would speak if he wanted to.

Laurent took another drag, slower than the others as he let his lungs fill with smoke and his eyes roam down Damen’s body. There was something intentional to it, the gradualness of the act that Damen couldn’t place. It was only after he pulled away, blowing out from the side of his mouth that he said, “who’s Aimeric?”

Damen blinked, mute. It was admittedly not what he’d been expecting, and it gave him a sense of anticlimax. He wasn’t sure why, he couldn’t imagine what Laurent could possibly have to converse with him about, but it left him feeling stymied. 

“Aimeric – “ Damen wasn’t entirely sure why he was answering. Maybe because it was one of the first things Laurent asked him that didn’t seem just for the sake of annoying him. “He was Jord’s cellmate.”

He didn’t bother asking where Laurent had heard of him. The name was bound to come up, given the men he associated himself with. He instead found himself wondering why Laurent had chosen to ask Damen of all people.

Laurent’s chin moved with a slow nod. Damen recognized the stirring look that moved behind his eyes, certain and pointed. It was the same one he’d worn every time he reached a solution before Damen. “Was he attacked?”

Damen considered if Jord would have spoken about him to Laurent, for his immediate assumption to go to death. There was no pleasant way to say it, and there was nothing pleasant about it, so he wouldn’t speak of it as such. 

“He hung himself,” Damen said. “A few weeks before you got here.”

It had been… It happened. Damen knew it did, and objectively, he’d seen worse. But it hadn’t been easy. Or fair. He had been in Damen’s section, up on the second level, and it had been the last thing Damen had expected when he’d come back from his work assignment to the cell block for midday count, stepping in just a few seconds before he’d stepped off the ledge. Damen had closed his eyes, and lowered his head, and tried to remove the sound Jord made from his head. 

He watched as Laurent’s eyes followed the curl of smoke that wafted up from his fingers. He stubbed it out by his boot, then looked at it again, then shoved the bud into his pocket. He didn’t say anything.

It would have upset Laurent. He would have been as placid as he was now, nearly careless, yet Damen could practically feel the effect of Laurent pressed behind him as Damen would have used his height to step in front of him, making sure that he wouldn’t have to see.

“Jord got in a few fights over him,” Damen said, mainly to fill the silence. He rubbed at his cheek. “Or for him, maybe. I don’t know.”

“Sounds like Jord,” Laurent said.

The surety of the statement caused a flicker in Damen’s mind. He removed his hand, setting it on the grass. It was bright green against their jumpsuits. “How well do you know him?”

“Why?” Laurent’s lashes lifted with the question. “Going to warn me about the dangers of prison friendships?”

“If anyone needs to be warned,” Damen said dully. “It’s the people you befriend.”

Laurent’s eyes brightened at that a fraction, like a little banter was all he’d needed in that moment. Damen hated that he noticed, and he hated that he cared.

But Laurent just shrugged, leaning the side of his head on the wood. “I know him well enough.”

“That sounds nothing like you,” Damen said. He was mirroring Laurent’s new position. He couldn’t believe they were talking like this, or that he was allowing it. It had been a whole few minutes where he hadn’t thought of strangling Laurent – in any way, for that matter – and the normalcy of it was off-putting. 

“It reeks of you, doesn’t it,” Laurent said.

Something about that made Damen’s heart move at a painful beat. Maybe it was the way he’d said it. He remembered what Laurent had told him once, a silent reminiscing, and so he said, “Not Auguste?”

For a moment, Damen thought someone might have struck out from behind the shed with a shank from the way Laurent’s face went white. Damen almost turned to look over his shoulder, but he would have heard if anyone else had approached. It was just the two of them, with Laurent’s eyes going bleary and unfocused. 

And then he said, bluntly, “Auguste is dead.”

Damen pressed his lips tightly together, stopping any more words from coming out. It churned in his head, pulling at different memories like loose threads and tangling them together in a knot in his chest. He remembered scant phrases from his single time visiting; _acute Traumatic Brain Injury. Lack of cognitive function. Persistent vegetative state_. He remembered heavy lidded light blue eyes, and the occasional twitch of a hand that made Laurent react each time. He remembered Laurent at the end of that night, tough, unyielding Laurent, pressing his forehead into Damen’s neck and allowing himself to be held. 

They weren’t even supposed to be there. They’d been on a quick leeway, jetting from Chasteigne to Arran in the dead of the night with little more than an hour to spare. But Laurent had needed to go, and he’d wanted Damen to come with him, and Damen would have followed him anywhere.

He didn’t know what to say. He considered telling Laurent that his father didn’t make it either, that he hadn’t gotten to say goodbye, but it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. It had been so long since he’d been the person to try and offer Laurent comfort, and even if he found the ability to do it now, he didn’t know if he would be allowed.

“That’s not right,” Damen said instead, hearing barbells fall and whistles ring out as the alarm began to sound overhead. Yard time was over. “I’m sorry.”

Laurent was pushing himself to his feet before him. His back was turned, and the sirens and guards were loud, but Damen could still just hear him say, simply, “Nothing’s right.” 

Another part of prison that never grew more pleasant: body searches. 

They were particularly low on Laurent’s list of interests. It wasn’t the fear of being caught with contraband; his qualms were far less clinical. If Laurent was going to chance carrying something around with him then he wasn’t going to be stupid about it. It was a wonder that the guards didn’t get frustrated with the unimaginative hiding places. It’s like people weren’t even trying anymore. 

Their block had a mass sweep two nights ago, jostling them out of sleep in the middle of the night with synchronous calls from the guards and row after row of cell doors sliding open with a bang. There was no pattern to them, no chance to prepare out of a frenzied, last minute scrabble. Laurent had nothing at the time, but he wasn’t as certain of Lazar as he watched him jump down from his bunk with a heel rubbing at his forehead. He’d seen Laurent watching him, and gave little more than a sluggish shake of his head in return before stepping outside with his hands crossed behind him. 

Laurent watched as cell after cell got tossed effectively, their sheets being stripped from the thin mattresses and left in a rumple at their feet. A series of shots had been given out, and two men alone had been taken to solitary as a result. One was a stranger to Laurent. A bulky man who hadn’t taken it well and ended up with a fist to his jaw and cuffs slapped around his wrists, a baton pushing at his back. The other was Orlant. 

“He’ll be fine,” Lazar told him when it was over, despite Laurent not having asked. “He didn’t have drugs on him, and he wouldn’t keep a weapon anywhere obvious. Whatever it was, it won’t keep him long.”

Laurent would still take being woken from his sleep or interrupted in his downtime over a body search. They were just as spontaneous and far less detached than a box of things being kicked out of the way. They were done in rows, or individually selected by any guard who caught you and felt like getting handsy. More than once, Laurent was pulled away for an arbitrary strip search. 

The walk to the infirmary was lengthy enough without the interval, which CO Makedon had pointed out. He’d also stated that he would be personally administering a search after leaving the infirmary as they did with every inmate, but the opposing guard had still shaken his head and motioned to the wall where the other inmates were lined up.

It was fully clothed that afternoon, but the thin barrier of clothing did little to dispel the sour taste in Laurent’s throat. He stood with his chest to the wall and his arms spread out as his sides as a kneeling guard pressed his palms against his ass. 

“Tight,” Adrastus said. It was directed to the CO conducting his own search beside them, speaking about Laurent like he was nothing more than furniture. “What do you think he can be hiding in here?” 

The CO didn’t respond, and Laurent put his focus on him instead. His name was Charls, and he was one of the milder people Laurent had come into contact with. He frequently asked inmates in the library what they were reading, and didn’t seem to flinch when was met with insolent responses. He was a prime example of the kind of person Laurent would have conned, and it almost made him feel bad to think about. 

“You’re clear,” Adrastus said, getting up from his crouch and placing a hand on his belt. “Hope it was as good for you, pretty.” 

Laurent’s tongue felt raw as he released it from between his teeth. Makedon snapped his cuffs back on before placing a steering hand between his shoulder blades and turning him towards the direction of the left stairwell, as impersonal in the touch as he’d been when he’d shown up to Laurent’s cell and told him he was going to medical. 

Laurent hadn’t bothered asking questions that wouldn’t be answered. It was a change of pace if anything, and it was a more inviting option than sitting in his bunk and being stimulated by a blank cement wall. He welcomed the chance to have a look around the prison, and didn’t bother to hide doing just that as he was led into the medical unit. 

There were two different rooms that Laurent could tell were available for the inmates, a glass window on each that allowed everything inside to be seen, and for those inside to see the comings and going from both the elevator and the staircase that Laurent had been brought in through. One room was smaller, two chairs and a standard medical bed, every cabinet in the room with a visible lock on it. The other was more occupied, only half of it in Laurent’s line of sight, with a line of cots separated by a thin curtain. Most of the beds were filled. 

Laurent was directed to sit by a female nurse. She had long hair that nearly concealed the tag _Halvik_ , the Vaskian name suiting her dark eyes and no nonsense veneer. She didn’t speak as she removed a file from an overflowing cabinet, left it out of his reach on a counter and then crossed over into the adjacent room without missing a beat.

It was a few minutes before Laurent was joined by anyone else, in which he’d busied himself with taking in all the inmates he could see and trying to guess their offense, a mindless game he played with himself when his cell lacked entertainment. Sometimes he surprised even himself. When the door opened and closed back after, it was to reveal not the nurse but an unfamiliar man.

He was considerably older, beyond his fifties with wrinkles around his eyes and ease with the way he moved. His light scrubs were mainly covered by a long white coat, and he didn’t look up from the file he’d reached for as he said, “remove his cuffs.”

Makedon did, closing them around his belt loop and leaning back against the wall.

“And give us some privacy, please.”

He didn’t shift. “It’s protocol.”

The doctor turned towards Makedon, not moving from his spot by the scale. He stood against the window, the sun pouring in making his gray hairs seem lighter. “My patients are entitled to confidentiality.”

Makedon eyed Laurent, who was watching the exchange play out wordlessly. “They’re not patients, doctor,” he said. “They’re cons.”

The doctor frowned. It sent a series of lines throughout his face, and his shoes were soft against the floor as he walked towards the door, pulling it open.

“Outside,” he said, lifting a hand towards the hall. “I will alarm you if need be.”

Makedon removed himself from the wall with a heaving sigh, pushing his hands into his pockets. His radio went off in incoherent coding as he stepped into the hallway, and Laurent could still see the straight line of his shoulders from his new post. His attention had moved to the flurrying nurses.

The doctor sighed as well into the new silence. A different kind, like there were gentler words behind it. He turned to face Laurent, sliding his glasses off as he set the file down.

“My name is Paschal,” he said, leaning against the counter. “I’m the doctor of this penitentiary, I’ll be seeing to all of your medical needs.”

“My needs,” Laurent said.

“Physical,” Paschal went on. “Mental. That’s why you’re here today,” he said. “We do intake screenings for all the new inmates, updating our records and seeing who requires what. We’re a bit backed up with the influx of new transfers, which is why it’s taken me so long to see you.”

“Surprisingly,” Laurent said, sliding a single leg forward. “I’ve had nothing to do but wait.”

Paschal’s head tilted. “Does the feeling make you restless?”

“It’s a change of pace from my usual activities,” Laurent said. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

“It’s not what I’m asking.”

Laurent nodded his understanding. Paschal looked like he was waiting for more, and when he didn’t receive it, he nodded his own head. He opened the folder again, turning to a certain page. “Let’s begin.”

Laurent sat in the infirmary for an unperceivable amount of time, running through just about anything a doctor might ask you in a regular checkup and beyond. It had been so long since Laurent had been to a proper examination, certainly not since he’d been a boy. Anything routine had stopped at the age of fifteen, and any medical attention he’d received after that had been scarce and only when required, never in the same place. Paschal wanted to know about those gaps plenty. 

There were standard steps taken. Weight, height, blood pressure, dental, the like. A full body check in which he looked for lesions, rashes, scars, bruises, needle marks, and even an inquiry about tattoos. He applied pressure in certain places, watching Laurent carefully as he did so, keeping notes before moving to the next step.

And all throughout it, the talking. Some of it was understated; a passing comment made that was obviously intended to coax a response out of Laurent. Some was outright, inquiries about substances taken, substances missed. He named off a list of optional medications offered to qualified prisoners that Laurent had no intentions of using but listened to nonetheless. It was a little senseless as far as Laurent was concerned. It may have been common knowledge, but he saw no reason to put potential scores into desperate inmates heads, be that for selling or using.

He then delved into past illnesses, branching into the familial category. Laurent knew that that was likely one of the aspects that would be most readily documented, and he watched as clement eyes scanned the sheet slowly before Paschal set his jaw in place. 

That was when the commotion began.

They came out through the elevator. Laurent saw the doors slide open over Paschal’s head and through the glass. The guards and staff were likely the only ones who had the combination and therefore offered little interest to him; the only reason Laurent looked to begin with was because of the nurse that ran out to join them.

But then another nurse followed her out of the room, and their voices became loud enough that they penetrated through to where Laurent and Paschal were sitting. Paschal straightened, and turned, and it was right about then that the door was thrown open and into the wall, the nurse’s body half leaned into the room like she couldn’t afford to leave the situation. 

“Doctor,” she said, but Paschal was already standing up with enough force that his chair pushed back. “You’re needed.”

“Clear the room,” Paschal said, snapping his gloves off and hurrying a key into a cabinet lock. The shift from the kind, hesitantly probing doctor to this mode was instantaneous. “Transport the inmate back to his cell and get me ten CCs of lidocaine – no, we don’t know where the bleeding is coming from yet.”

The inmate’s head was lowered between his shoulders, and he was being half assisted and half tugged down the long corridor and towards the entryway. His arms were slung around the guard’s shoulders, though they were being held down by both men as if he’d resisted the help and they’d resulted in simply pulling him along. 

Makedon was yanking Laurent up from his spot, and the metal of the handcuffs dug into his bones as they were locked too tight into place, the connecting chain being used to pull him out. Everyone was speaking over each other, Paschal calling out directives and ordering the guards to lay him down on the bed. The inmate’s leg was dragging in an awkward way that emphasized his limp, and the vibrancy of his jumpsuit was dulled down by the muddied scruff of boot marks. He lifted his head, just a little, and Laurent’s throat churned so violently that he thought he could taste blood.

Laurent was being shoved at his back now, his legs locking in the way they’d been chained together in the truck on the way to his court hearing. Makedon’s voice was booming in his ears, though it did little to combat the loud, screeching sound that Laurent could hear in his head like sirens.

“Damianos,” Paschal was saying, and then the door between them slammed. 

Damen normally saw these things coming.

It hadn’t been the first time. It probably wasn’t close to the last. Damen relied on his instincts and intuition; it had gotten him out of many dodgy situations before they’d had a chance to even begin. He didn’t know what to accredit this slipup to, other than the fact that his mind wasn’t really there. He wasn’t present, and that was a rule he often preached and knowingly broke on his own. He should have been alert, but instead he was caught in a tangle.

Damen had been in the laundry room, working on that same machine that no one was able to get to start. There was no shift that hour and the guard had been posted outside, and so Damen hadn’t bothered to remove his head from the inside to check and see who’d opened the door, amateurishly assuming it was the stationed guard to check on him. They’d moved silently, which was what he attributed not hearing the footsteps to. Beyond that, he had no excuses.

There was a group of them, all ranging in size and caliber. Damen managed to recall scarce facts: Meniados had no lost love for Damen after he couldn’t deliver on his payment and was shut out of their arrangement. Hestal was the head of rivaling drug dealings. Naos, big on national pride, harbored strong animosity over Damen conducting business with Veretians. The list went on.

Any of those things could have been why they’d targeted Damen, or none at all. Damen hadn’t had time to think or discuss when he eventually turned and was met with a closing circle of five pairs of eyes. He had no time to do anything, but make a decision. 

He could take them, all of them. Even weaponless, Damen had handled significantly worse. He wasn’t bullish enough to think he would come out of it unscathed, but he knew where he could hold his own. If Damen fought back, he would win.

But Damen knew what would happen. If Damen started, he didn’t know if he would stop, especially if they kept on coming at him. And Damen knew what would happen if the COs ran in to find most of them men on the floor with Damen up, breathing, swinging. He remembered not too long ago, the instinct that had run through him and overrode reason, the consuming feeling of red and the _crunch_ of a nose under his fist. More than that, he remembered being yanked off by guards and thrown into solitary, his fists still coated in drying blood as a cement door closed on his face. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t go back. Not now.

And so, Damen did what he had to do. He took it.

He wasn’t completely destructive about it. He was aiming to survive, after all. He ducked. He avoided. When a shank came out, Damen knocked one out of the way so it skidded across the floor and pivoted just in time so the next one missed any vital organs. It had hurt, going into his thigh. It flashed behind his eyelid and tore a strangled sound from his throat, but Damen had once gritted his teeth and kept himself conscious as Nikandros picked pieces of wood out of an open wound. He could handle this. He could handle more.

When Damen went down, he covered his head and braced the kicks, oxygen lodging in his throat when one smashed against his ribs and knocked him into the wall. _Endure_ he told himself, rolling on his side and blocking the next one from making contact with his throat. He couldn’t leave genpop. He couldn’t leave.

Damen didn’t know how long it took until the guards showed up.

He only noticed they were there when he was being pulled up, the others being pushed down on the table with their hands twisted behind their backs. He began to test each part of his body. It was difficult to see out how his right eye, and one of his legs didn’t feel right as he held himself up. His ribs weren’t cracked, but breathing was uncomfortable. His head spun. There was blood.

It was better than Damen thought it would be. He could walk on his own, which he told the guards, but they weren’t listening. There was shouting all around, and static noise that throbbed in his skull. Damen tried to make for the exit on his own but he stumbled, and it was a few hazy seconds before he realized his weight was resting on CO Berenger.

“I’m fine,” Damen said, but the words tasted like cotton. He just needed to sit. “I can –“

Chelaut was at his other side, and they were no longer in the laundry room. Damen wondered how Guion would account for letting the others in when he was supposed to be manning the door. The loudness swarmed around them like insects, and then it was muddled, and then Damen felt like he was hearing everything from underwater and was struggling to break through to the surface. His name was being said. His nametag. His small name. A hand pressed into his side, and Damen hissed at the pain, jolting. His eyes opened, and everything was white. He saw women running, brightness around him. It was harder to lift his head than before, like it had been filled with led on the way over. He pushed.

He saw Laurent.

He was in medical. The air here was clean and the sunlight was brighter, and Laurent was here with the painkillers and sedatives and the little more offered safety. Panic throbbed in Damen so hard that he nearly doubled over again, and he tried to reach him. He could. He had to.

Damen was being pushed down onto a bed, and it happened so quickly that vomit nearly rose. A light was flashing in his eyes, side to side. Sweat ran down his forehead.

“Damianos,” Paschal said, and it was loud, like it wasn’t the first time. “Damen.”

He couldn’t reach him.

Damen stayed in the infirmary for two days.

It was excessive, in his opinion. He really was fine. His ribs weren’t even cracked, and the stab wound was shallow. He’d been cleaned and stitched up upon arrival, and Damen had remained awake through it all. It was a mild concussion that could have gone over far worse, and a few hours of rest and painkillers was all he’d needed. 

Paschal disagreed with Damen’s assurances. If there was one thing Damen had taken out of a three-year frequency to medical, it was that Paschal did that often.

And so Damen weathered the stay, and took it as an unnecessary but mandatory reprieve. The food was a little better, and the atmosphere was generally a little calmer. Kashel touched his arm and lingered over his cot, and what once would have been enticing was now just another thing he took in stride. 

“I can sleep in my cell,” Damen told the nurses, and the aids, and Paschal. And then he was met with a nod, and a smile, and an inquiry on how he was feeling.

In the end, Damen was released because his bed was needed, and there were more pressing matters in a men’s prison than a couple of bruises and a fucking headache. 

Damen was escorted back to his cell by Adrastus, who didn’t seem concerned by where they’d been or what that might mean for Damen’s condition. It was normal, and Damen preferred it that way. He felt a lingering fatigue and had to put a bit more weight on his left leg, but he was no more worse for wear than after any other fight.

It was tier time when Damen came back, the time of day in their schedule where they needed to remain in the block but the bars were left open, giving them half an hour to roam the different cells. Nikandros wasn’t there, which didn’t surprise him. Nikandros grew about as restless as Damen did when the gates closed, and he rarely passed up the opportunity to walk around or make himself busy. 

Adrastus slipped the key into Damen’s cuffs and let him free. He was looking around the cell as he did. There was nothing eye-catching about it, neither Damen nor Nikandros the types to put up photos or make the space feel familiar or homey. Damen steeled himself for the chance of an impromptu search, and reminded himself that attacking a guard would go over worse than retaliating against an inmate.

But Adrastus did nothing of the sort. He put his key back on the loop, announced the inmate’s depositing into his radio, and left Damen alone.

Damen knew he should be feeling weary, but he was just pleased to be back to normality. He walked towards the low sink and looked into the mirror, setting his hands down and hunching forward. It was cracked and foggy from filth, but Damen could easily still make out the scratch down his cheek and the bruise around one of his eyes, red fading into purple. He touched a hand to the center of his thigh, running his finger down the tender line of stitching, shifting the stance of his legs. He turned on the faucet and waited for the water to run, dipping his head down and splashing his face. He did it again, lifting his face back to the mirror as droplets ran down his cheeks.

He whirled around so quickly; he half expected to be reprimanded for it.

Laurent was standing at the opening to his cell. His hands were at his sides as he hovered at the entry line, his footing a little uneven. His fingers clenched and then spread, his hair swept away from his forehead. His eyes were on Damen’s face.

“You’re back,” he said.

There wasn’t much to respond to that. Damen shut the faucet off and lingered by the sink, rolling his sleeves up. He nodded. 

Laurent’s gaze finally left his eye and roamed down the rest of his body, like he was waiting for a wound to open and for blood to begin pouring out. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he only closed his mouth and continued to stare. He straightened his stance.

Their cells weren’t close. They were both on the second level, but the perimeter was large and they weren’t in each other’s line of sight. But he’d been to Lazar’s cell before and he knew what the vantage offered. He remembered standing there with him, watching as inmates came and went. 

“Laurent – “

“Are you all right?” 

Damen stilled in his step away from the wall. He didn’t know what he was going to say, only that he’d needed to fill the silence. He’d had enough silence. He thought of Laurent arriving to his cell moments after him. He thought of Laurent, waiting, and tried to swallow back whatever that made him feel.

“I am,” Damen said, instead of all of the other things that moved through his head and pushed against his lips. “You know I am.”

Laurent’s own lips pressed together. “Can you just –“ his fist clenched again. “Not be yourself for a minute?”

That made Damen smile at the ground. He didn’t know why, it wasn’t funny. It just wasn’t something anyone else would tell him. He moved to sit on the bottom bunk, spreading his legs and laying his forearms on his thighs, careful in the placement of his elbow. A second passed, and then Laurent was sitting beside him.

Damen blinked, surprised. “Are you moving in?”

“Damen.” 

“I’m okay,” he said, not sure why it came out gentle. “I’m fine,” he added, firmer. “Really, it was nothing.”

Laurent didn’t seem convinced. Or appeased. He narrowed his eyes and followed the gash that ran down his cheekbone, and a part of Damen thought he might reach out and touch it. He felt trapped by it, and he knew if Laurent tried then he would let him.

But Laurent only leaned forward, splaying his hands against his knees and squeezing. His jaw moved before he spoke. “Why didn’t you…” 

“What?”

“Fight back.” Laurent turned to him.

Damen’s tongue wet his lips. He placed his own hands on the metal bedframe underneath him. “Who said I didn’t?”

“ _Damen_ ,” Laurent repeated.

That, inexorably, irritated Damen. He curled his fingers and leaned inwards, bringing their faces closer. 

“And then what?” he said, looking into Laurent’s still blue eyes. “I get shots on my record or thrown to rot in solitary. Or if the guards were in a certain mood, have all of my privileges revoked?” he squeezed the rod harder. “Welcome to the realities of prison, we can’t do whatever we want. Not what you expected?”

The placidly in Laurent’s eyes didn’t change. His expression had remained mostly impersonal. Beneath him, Damen could feel the blanket tug and strain.

“I’m sorry,” Laurent said.

The words stunned Damen. It was the last thing he was expecting to hear, and while he considered the very real possibility that he’d heard wrong, he wouldn’t ask Laurent to repeat himself. He leaned back, whirling, and tried very hard not to gape. 

“What for?” Incredulously. 

Laurent gazed back at him. Damen didn’t know what he wanted to hear, or if he could even bear it. Laurent had to know that.

Laurent said, measured, “that you had to go through that.”

Slowly, Damen breathed out through his nose. Of course that was what he’d meant. He lifted a shoulder. “Like I said,” and then let it drop. “It’s fine.”

And then he turned to him. “What about you?”

Laurent’s nose did a thing that it rarely did, scrunching up in puzzlement. “Me?”

“You were there,” Damen said, like he’d just remembered. Like this was the first time he’d thought of it. “In the infirmary. You were with Paschal, I saw you.” 

“Oh,” Laurent said, and it was more of a sound than a word, and was followed by belated flutter of his lashes and an unplaceable look on his face. “I was – “ he shook his head. He didn’t look like he’d meant to. “I was there for intake screenings, it was just protocol. I wasn’t –“

He didn’t finish his sentence, which was also very rare. He looked confused and Damen didn’t know why. He felt like a string was pulled inside his chest, like a full balloon that had been nudged between his ribcage finally, gradually deflated. The sensation left him about as confused as Laurent appeared. They were gazing at each other.

“Damen.”

Damen and Laurent both turned at the sound of his name. The synced movement made him realize how closely they were bent together. He didn’t move his body as he lifted his head, seeing Nikandros standing in their cell.

“You’re back,” he said. “Good.” And then, “and you’re on my bunk.”

And that was it. No questions, for which Damen was grateful. He knew Nikandros could see that, and the relieved look and familiar presence was all he needed.

He expected Laurent to get up and leave them, which he didn’t do. He then expected Nikandros to make some comment about it, which he didn’t do either. He just took the few steps the cell gave them, leaned his spine against the opposing wall and crossed his arms.

They were all looking at each other. Damen thought of how long it had been since they’d been together like this, like they were friends. 

They had been, once. Damen remembered vivid nights of the three of them looking at a table of potential plans, each of them pointing and redrawing, contributing something different. They all had something else to offer, more than just the brain and the brawn. He remembered walking in on them talking, sometimes laughing. He didn’t know what Laurent and Nikandros would have called what they had, but they’d meant something to each other, and that had meant something to Damen.

It was a strange dynamic to sink back into, namely because Damen didn’t know what this new one even was. He wasn’t deluded enough to pretend as if fucking Laurent hadn’t become a regular thing, or something to think twice about. What boggled him were moments like these, and his uncertainty as to why he wasn’t putting a stop to them.

He shifted his focus instead to Nikandros, who was sure and straightforward and didn’t live to throw everything Damen thought he knew into upheaval. 

“Tell me,” he said. “What have I missed?”

Nikandros’ eyebrows slowly pulled together. His eyes slid to Damen’s left, and Damen heard the bedding creak as Laurent leaned against its side. 

“He doesn’t mean –“ Laurent gave a knowing look. “Obviously.”

“Actually,” Nikandros said. “It’s not that obvious.”

Damen frowned. 

“In other news,” Laurent continued, bringing forward a hand like he was going to begin ticking things off on his fingers. “Lazar is starting a pool on Ancel and the guard he’s trying to fuck, Ah, and Jord got into it with Chauvin again during breakfast, but enough people saw Chauvin slide his tray off the table so they were both given shots when Jord punched him.”

Damen would have liked to see that. He always had a good feeling about Jord.

“What,” Nikandros said, from his new position on the ground where he was crouching against the wall. “Are you collecting prison gossip?”

“My other forms of excitement have been –“ Laurent visibly considered his wording, needlessly theatric. “Withheld.” 

Damen’s reception came in a short breath, and an amused stare at his lap, and an odd flutter in his stomach. He knew what that feeling meant, and he also knew what that meant he should do. 

“You were always plenty creative on your own,” he said instead.

It gave him the reaction he’d intended, which was complete, dazed silence. The silence was followed by a deep flush to Laurent’s cheeks, and a primal, upper handed feeling that Damen wasn’t above basking in. His teeth sunk into his lip.

“No,” Nikandros interjected, pulling both of them forward and out of the senseless bubble Damen was floating in. “No. I’m not listening to this again. If you’re going to be an idiot –“ He pointed to Damen. “And you’re not going to care –“ Laurent. “Then keep it contained around me.”

He didn’t even sound angry. He sounded like Damen should know better, and he was right. Damen needed the words like the harsh snap of a rubber band against his wrist, balancing him. He didn’t turn to Laurent, he shouldn’t, so he kept himself hunched forward and squeezed a hand down his jaw and reminded himself of days, weeks, months, waiting for a letter that would never come, a visit that he longed for in vain, an explanation that didn’t exist. 

It was lucky for them that the guards saved them from the choice of who would make the next move. The main gate slid open as an alarm went off, and the sound pulled both Laurent and Nikandros up at the same time.

“Ladies,” One of the guards yelled, too far away to discern who it was. “Tier time is over. Report to your work assignments, or back to your own cell. Now!”

Nikandros, Damen knew, was to report to commissary. He was to rotate the cells today with his cart, and was set to distribute most of this month’s product with the day’s round. He heard him leave, or maybe it was Laurent who walked out first, returning to his cell. Damen couldn’t be sure.

He stayed that way for a long time.

There weren’t many positive things to say about prison. 

That was a given. There was a significant amount of bad that outweighed the good, one of those things being the people. The bulk of those you would find were truly terrible, even to the standards of Damen who’d led a life surrounded by very bad company. Though in all fairness, Damen himself wasn’t quite good company, but even he could distinguish a no good criminal with someone who got off easy by getting life in prison.

That being said, there were still some standouts who caught his eye, and managed to insert their way into Damen’s trusted circle. It was frustrating for Damen to look around the dynamic he’d created and think about all the fun they could be having if they weren’t so restricted here. He was managing, but Damen wasn’t a God. There was only so much damage he could cause while trying to work around the Artesian prison system. 

Pallas was one of those rare finds. His story was as bleak as most, and unexpectedly shared with Damen over a shampoo bottle filled with Huet’s strongest hooch. Once a sergeant in the Akielon military, he’d been guarding a detention facility in Sicyon when he discovered the illegal torture of several detainees. He’d reported it to his commanding officer, and when he refused to keep quiet he was dishonorably discharged for his involvement in black market activities. Along with the shame came the difficulties of finding work, which was how he ended up driving trucks filled with stolen goods.

It was a nasty hand he’d been dealt. Damen empathized, personally familiar with how it felt to get fucked over by someone you trusted. He hadn’t shared that of course, but he did raise his bottle and offer him his condolences. He then offered him an in. 

Damen liked to find the silver lining in things, and Pallas did still have those connections. 

They were discussing just that over a spread of stomach turning food, their various deliberations concealed by the pretense of a deck of cards. He didn’t think either of them were paying any attention to what numbers they even held in their hands as they spoke. Pallas set a card down, murmuring a vendor name and a capacity limit. Damen swept, picked up three, and recited an inventory list like he’d rehearsed it in his sleep.

“What are we playing here?”

The voice didn’t announce any immediate concern, but Damen still cut himself short and gave Pallas a nudge under the table that said this conversation was over. He then set his hand face down, meeting Lazar’s impish grin. 

Lazar, characteristically, did not seem to require any kind of invitation. He approached them like it was expected, though Damen figured that if Pallas was here then it was. It wasn’t Lazar’s legs swinging over the bench that stopped Damen short. It was the ones that followed him.

Laurent hadn’t been as blithe in forcing his presence as Lazar had, hanging back for a beat like a part of him was considering bolting. But the last remaining seat was obvious, and the unnoticeable moment was threatening to turn into an awkward one, and so he set his tray down and sat across from Damen. 

As hard as he tried, Damen couldn’t make himself remember the last time they’d sat with each other at a table. It had to be – they’d taken a trip to Bazal towards the end, but Damen had been in Ios when he’d gotten arrested, and he couldn’t get himself to recall if Laurent had been there at all, or if he’d been gone before that stay altogether. 

Laurent seemed as aware of the incongruity as Damen was. He was busying himself with his plastic fork and spoon like he was unsure which went in what hand, neither meeting the other’s eye. He wasn’t normally so fidgety, he considered that it could have been just a show. Damen didn’t know if it was amusing or woeful that he’d had his cock in Laurent’s mouth a week ago but sharing a meal made them both skittish and unsure. 

Damen shook it off, gathering the cards in both hands and refocusing on Lazar. “It’s Akielon,” he said. “You wouldn’t be interested.”

“On the contrary,” Lazar tipped his cup forward. “I love Akielon games.”

“He is a quick learner,” Pallas said.

Laurent chose then to contribute. “That doesn’t sound very telling to me,” he said. “Considering.”

Lazar was unperturbed. He shrugged it off, along with a knowing shake of his head. “Don’t underestimate the art of simplicity,” he said. “Trust me.”

Damen watched Laurent slide his spoon out of his mouth, casually. He brought his hands to his own tray. “Do you like games?” 

If Laurent was expecting to be directly acknowledged, he wasn’t sure. But he was sizing Damen up now, fixing him with a stare like it was one of the first times he’d really considered him, which he figured was the point. His pulse spiked.

“His silence comes and goes,” Lazar offered.

“Is that so,” Damen said.

Laurent shrugged. 

It was Pallas who leaned towards him. Nothing threatening, which he could be. Just enough to show his regard. “Are you well acquainted with many Akielons?”

Laurent pursed his lower lip slightly. He shuffled food around on his tray, leaning his head left and right as if to say _here and there._ “I’m well travelled.”

“Oh, that vague answer,” Lazar waved it away with a hand. “I’ve heard that one before.”

Laurent took a drink. “Is it a cliché?” 

“I think it’s just something us unprivileged kids wouldn’t comprehend,” Lazar motioned airily to himself. “Not that you would understand.”

Laurent’s loose grin remained. Damen remembered all the earliest times where he’d seen him wearing the same clothing, something you would never notice by the way he held himself.

“We all still ended up in the same place,” Damen pointed out. “Privilege means nothing.”

“Spoken like a man who has a chain of clubs from Lentos to Dice to his name,” Pallas said into his next bite of food. 

“My family’s name,” Damen corrected. He didn’t miss the way golden lashes lifted at that. “I’m more of an associate.” 

“Clubs,” Lazar repeated, with a faraway look in his eyes like he was seeing strobe lights and dancers and underhanded deals. “Fuck. I miss that.”

“I miss real food,” Pallas moved peas around with his fork, dropping it right after. “I would kill for a steak.”

There was no shortage of things that Damen missed. Liquor that didn’t make his mouth rasp. The smell of money. The sound of an engine roaring down an endless, starlit road. The fucking sky, whenever he wanted to see it.

“You think this stuff is bad,” Lazar gestured. “You should have seen what they were serving us in Arles. Makes this slop taste gourmet.”

Pallas shrugged, bringing his hands behind his back with a long stretch. He then pushed himself back by the edge of the table, dropping his empty tray on top of Lazar’s half full one, plastic clacking together. That was the only signal he gave before he was walking off with a farewell tilt of his fingers to Damen, and an equally farewell tilt of Lazar’s smirk.

And like that, Damen and Laurent were alone. With their unknowing buffers gone, there was nothing left to fill the gaps or offer either of them a distraction. Their options were to sit in silence, go their separate ways, or try and make conversation. 

It used to be easy for them. Maybe it still could be.

Damen placed the abandoned deck of cards into its box, sliding it into his pocket. His leg no longer twinged as he put his weight on one foot to adjust his body, and so there wasn’t even that to think about.

He tapped his fingers in a row against the metal surface. “They’re gone,” he sad. “You can stop acting like you’re meek.” 

“Did I sell it?”

“The joke about Akielon sex practices might have been a bit bold.”

“Good tip,” Laurent said. His eyes sparkled. “I’m a quick learner, too.”

Damen drew his eyes down, knowing it was necessary. That only brought the thin scars on his knuckles into view, so he moved his hands to his lap. He knew without looking that Laurent noticed. 

“So,” Laurent said, which was a very un-Laurent way to start a statement. “How’s Kastor.”

That was another entwining relationship that Damen couldn’t exactly put his finger on. They were more hostile than him and Nikandros were, but Kastor was always less openly warm towards Damen than Nikandros was, so he didn’t know where that put things on a spectrum of perspective. 

“You do sound curious,” Damen said.

“I’m asking,” Laurent said, holding his gaze for the first time. “Aren’t I?”

“He’s…” How was his brother? “He’s good,” Damen said. “A father.”

Laurent’s shoulders lowered a little. He nodded like a fact he’d known came back to him, which Damen supposed could have gone either way. Once Jokaste had become pregnant, her presence around them all became much more scarce. 

“How’s the child?” Laurent asked. 

“Jokaste says he’s good,” Damen said. “Healthy. Keeps them up at night.”

Laurent gave a very small, very tentative smile, and it occurred to Damen that he’d never spoken to anyone about this. Nikandros was the only other person here who knew Damen’s family, but they would never discuss something like this.

Damen thought he should offer something too. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to, more that he was out of practice from talking his way through a minefield. 

“Do you know…“ Damen paused, unsure, but Laurent was looking at him expectantly. “Can I ask about Nicaise?” 

For a split second Laurent’s expression remained the same, like he was still waiting for Damen to speak. His question hung in the air, dangling between them off the edge of a thread, and Damen wondered if it would be easier if he just took it back, if they weren’t ready for that yet. 

But then it was gone, and for the next second there was no expression at all. “You remember Nicaise?”

He remembered Nicaise. The children’s wing of the center was the only stop Laurent had allowed the sole time they’d visited Auguste, but the boy was vicious and vivacious and had made Laurent smile. Damen touched the side of his neck, shrugging.

“He’s all right.” Laurent’s voice was soft, maybe from the way his head was tilted down. “Last I heard. Can’t exactly call there from prison.”

He pushed his half emptied tray aside, like turning a page. “Is Kastor still…” 

“Not since Euandros was born,” Damen said. He scratched at his stubble, eyeing the guards overhead as they walked across the narrow bridge. “He still has – people. You know. But he’s retired to the boring life, relatively speaking.”

Laurent looked away too, towards any of the possible guards lining the room. “Nothing like fatherhood to adjust reality.”

Damen didn’t know what to say to that. He thought of Auguste, who Damen had heard of many times but never had the chance to speak to. Laurent always claimed that he was good, better than them, that he’d make a good father someday. Damen didn’t know. He’d always thought that Laurent had the makings of someone who only knew selfless love, but he didn’t know anything anymore. 

“Not that you would know,” Damen said, in an effort to bring back a little familiarity to whatever this had become.

“Neither would you,” Laurent returned, lazily spoken, and for a moment things were normal. 

The next time, it was Damen who sought Laurent out.

It wasn’t technically the first time he did, but it was the first time where Damen felt like there was no other option but this, like the skin of Laurent’s wrist between his fingers was the only thing that would settle him. It had been days and he needed him. Damen felt like something in him had come awake from a long sleep, or maybe it was his entire being. Life was pumping through him in a way that it hadn’t in a long time and he wanted to breathe it into Laurent, and then to pin him down so the force of his body would be the only thing that kept Laurent from floating away from him again.

There were a handful of advantages that came with learning a prison landscape, but rarely had there been a time where Damen had been as grateful as he was now, with Laurent’s shuffling steps behind him and the gleam Damen thought he saw lining his face each time he looked behind them to make sure no one was following. 

It was a very intermittent thing to feel real solitude in prison. It was one of the most isolating places in the world but you were still always around people, always around _something._ Damen knew it was a type of gift to be alone of your own volition and to do with it what you please, and so he seized the moment without thinking, with Laurent’s face in his hands.

Laurent was never quite so sturdy when he was being kissed, like it was one thing he’d never managed to build a defense up for. He became molten in Damen’s arms, neck arching back like a silent plea for Damen to claim him there. Damen was wild for it. He wanted Laurent to present every part of his body to him like that, for Laurent to put himself in Damen’s hands and see that Damen still knew what he was being trusted with.

Damen moved him into the corner with his hands on Laurent’s hips, keeping him from stumbling back. He wanted to feel the slender curves there, the tight skin that bloomed under Damen’s palm. He told him so in his ear, dipping his head just enough.

“Are you as responsive as I remember?” Damen murmured, nosing at the line of his jaw. “Do you still like that?”

Damen brought a hand between Laurent’s legs and he moaned, muffling it into Damen’s neck where he hid his face. He rubbed the heel of his hand upwards and Laurent ground against him, uninhibitedly. It was another wall crumbling down between them. He was already hard and Damen wanted to replace his hand with his cock, to shed both of their clothing and hold Laurent up and take him against the wall until they were both panting, sweat gleaming down their bodies with Laurent flushed and wanton in his arms.

The thin hoop in Laurent’s ear winked as his head tilted. Damen took the gold between his teeth, tugging enough that he could hear that small gasp, Laurent’s hips jerking forward again. He used to have more, ones that Damen would spend up to hours playing with, toying with his mouth and soothing with his tongue. 

“Is this enough stimulation for you now,” Laurent asked, chased by another shudder.

Damen placed a flat palm against the wall above Laurent’s head. He removed his other hand and brought it below Laurent’s chin, slanting it up. Laurent’s eyes came open with the loss of touch. He was gazing up at Damen impatiently with his chest moving like rapid heartbeats, his bottom lip red and bitten. Damen had never seen anything so beautiful.

“Tell me,” Damen whispered. His thumb traced the crease in Laurent’s chin. “Tell me what you want.”

Laurent was still. His eyelids hooded like he needed to focus on this alone, this small bit of contact that might have been more than he’d allowed himself in a long time, before this. That thought made Damen ache, though he knew it shouldn’t. He would have spent every day giving Laurent everything he wanted, if he’d only been allowed.

And still. Laurent’s breath stuttered against Damen’s face and his lips hovered just shy of Damen’s, and Damen knew that he would still do anything Laurent asked of him, if he thought it would help him breathe easier.

Damen felt the kiss inside his bones; deep in his marrow, like it was a part of what made him up. It was in the way Laurent’s hands circled his neck and gripped him there like ownership. How Laurent nodded when Damen’s fingers went to his buttons, still trying to kiss him, grappling with him to pull the fabric apart and bare himself.

Laurent stepped away enough to reach behind, grabbing the back of his undershirt and drawing it over his head. He tossed it to the side, unselfconsciously, his arms flexing as he reached for Damen again.

“Off,” he said, spanning his hands up Damen’s front like he just wanted to touch him. “Take this off.”

Damen obliged. He pulled the fastenings apart and tugged it down his body, his shirt meeting Laurent’s on the floor. Damen saw the way Laurent watched him and desire flared; he wanted to impale himself on that look.

It was Damen who brought Laurent into that room but it was Laurent who pushed him onto the ground, climbing on top of him with his fingertips pressing Damen’s shoulders to the ground. His thighs were straddling Damen’s middle. His arousal was unmistakable like this; hard against Damen’s stomach, and the position alone and the way Laurent looked looming above him sent a ripple of raring need through Damen’s entire body

He could hear them both breathing loud before it had even begun. The cement was cold against Damen’s back and he was sure it showed in the faint quiver of his arms. Laurent rubbed his thumb into the hollow of Damen’s throat, keeping him steady.

“Like this,” Laurent said.

There was a short interlude where they put themselves back to pragmatic things, Damen lifting himself enough to pull his clothing down as far as they needed, Laurent removing his jumpsuit altogether. It was broken every few seconds by Damen pulling Laurent’s mouth down to his, Laurent nipping at Damen’s skin or breathing him in, but eventually they were left with Damen laying there exposed, Laurent gloriously naked on his lap.

Damen’s palms trailed the insides of Laurent’s thighs, feeling them tremor for him. His cock was flushed and hard against his stomach and Damen wanted to taste him there, wanted to fuck into him however Laurent directed and watch him come all over himself. 

Damen blindly tapped his hand at his side, beneath his hip, trying to retrieve what they needed without tearing his eyes away. Laurent’s impatience seemed to outweigh Damen’s franticness because he leaned forward, sweeping Damen’s attempts away and reaching into his pocket himself. He came out with just a slim tube, and when Damen tried to speak he was silenced by an intentional press of the bottle into his chest. “We don’t have forever.”

Damen would make it so they did. He popped the cap off and heard it skid along the floor, Laurent’s eyes following it. Damen touched his knee. 

“How do you want it?” 

It was how they found themselves with Damen’s fingers slicked, pushing deep into where Laurent was holding himself open for him. He’d told Damen into the curve of his mouth, murmuring into his lips that he wanted Damen to prepare him slowly, for Laurent to spread himself above him so that Damen could ease his way in and stretch Laurent for his cock.

Laurent’s neck was a flawless arch like this, his eyes drifting as he rocked against Damen’s fingers. His mouth was open. It was a test in restraint for Damen to keep the pace Laurent instructed, to feel his knuckles slide deeper into that tight spot and not let his eagerness win out. Damen thought he would combust if he didn’t have Laurent soon, like years and endless nights of banked craving would tip him over before he’d even had a chance. 

“Yes,” Laurent said, soft with mindlessness. “Good.” 

But he kept moving, not showing any sign of stopping. Damen wondered if this was all he required, if he wanted Damen to get him off with his fingers and then watch as Damen would writhe under his deliberate, sated stare, squirming and desperate for his own release. 

“Laurent,” Damen pleaded. He curved his fingers the way Laurent liked and Laurent sighed, craning his neck back a little more. “Laurent, please. Let me. I can make it so good for you.” He felt driven beyond reason. “Let me make it better for you.”

“I like this,” Laurent said, that soft voice tinged with rough. But then his clouded eyes came forward, and his hands were getting slick and Damen’s cock was in his hand.

Damen groaned, bucking up into it without the restraint to keep himself down. _Please_ , he thought, so hot for it that he couldn’t think straight. But Laurent knew, and he understood, and he slid his hand forward and anchored it on Damen’s chest as he sunk himself down.

Damen caught his tongue between his teeth, knowing that this was his ruin, that there was no one else out there for him. He felt like his truest self like this, on his back with Laurent on top of him, taking Damen all the way inside him with a moan. 

“Can I,” Damen panted, not sure what he was asking for. _Can I touch you, can I have you?_ But Laurent took a hold of Damen’s hands anyway, clenched at his sides, and brought them to his own hips so his fingers were wrapped around Laurent’s waist. 

And it was like that between them. Laurent moved his body and rolled his hips onto Damen’s cock, guided by the grip of Damen’s hands as he rocked Laurent in his lap. It was good, so good, and Damen knew that this was worth waiting for.

Laurent kept one hand placed on Damen’s chest as he took him like that, balancing himself forward so he could use Damen’s body the way he wanted. A slight spreading of his thighs and his eyes widened, pulling a sound out of him as he ground their hips together in small circles. 

It was a heady joining of everything together, Damen taking everything at once. His palms slid back to the firm muscles of Laurent’s ass, using the hold to pull Laurent into him as he thrust up into his body. It was a quickening rhythm, small sounds slipping from Laurent’s pressed lips that were nearly drained out by Damen’s heavy groans, his pleas, his grunts of how good Laurent felt, how perfect.

Laurent reached around him and took one of Damen’s hands, drawing it into his mouth and biting down, hard. The pain was something delicious, heightening Damen’s pleasure to something he’d never think to ask for. He’d needed it as much as Laurent did, the ferity of it, and he watched in rapture as Laurent slid his sore fingers out of his mouth, down his neck, all the while moving his body as he encouraged Damen to touch him.

Laurent came first. His nails bit into Damen’s shoulders as he let his weight drop forward, whimpering throughout his quaking release. Damen skimmed a palm up his leg, along his spine, nodding his assurances and kissing it into Laurent’s neck and praying that this moment didn’t end.

When Laurent pulled himself away, Damen was wholly defenseless to the hazy look on his face as he readjusted himself, sliding his hands against Damen’s stomach. He was just as defenseless when Laurent moved himself down, down, and took Damen in his mouth.

Damen was lost after that, and he came with his head thrown back and his hands too heavy at his side to even contemplate utilizing them. It was white-hot, lighting up every part of him. He opened his eyes just in time to see Laurent’s finger trace the side of his mouth, his tongue barely flashing out.

It was an effort for Damen to regain his breath. He felt like it had been removed from his body and was now crammed down his throat all at once, and he was struggling to get himself back in order. He saw it in Laurent too, the signs of everything that had transpired stark on his body, trailing down his abdomen with fingermarks on his sides.

Damen pushed himself up, conscious of the slow changing atmosphere that the climax had brought. He felt all of the inches that now separated them. He could feel how they held themselves now without any pretenses hanging over them, like two unsure leopards circling each other.

Damen averted his eyes as Laurent took care of his own practical matters, denying himself that small pleasure. There was nothing for him to do now but dress, so he remained where he was as he lifted his lower body up, arranging everything back into place and pulling the jumpsuit up his body.

His undershirt was on the other side of the room, behind where Laurent had remained. Damen looked up and saw that Laurent was partially dressed with his suit in both of his hands, still seated as well. He was stretching his legs out so he could slide them into the pants.

Damen froze. Time froze, everything stopping as Damen’s pulse thudded inside his ears, squeezing around his heart. He blinked his eyes, multiple times, and with newfound clarity realized that he had gripped a hold of Laurent’s calf.

It wasn’t thought but instinct that had Damen tugging on Laurent’s leg, pulling it towards him.

He hadn’t seen wrong, some delusion of satiated bliss. There, in bold Akielon lettering that hadn’t faded a bit, Damen saw the variation of wording that he recognized well, having carried the meaning with him forever. On the inside of Laurent’s ankle and just a little bit curled: _Tamed_.

Seeing the tattoo like this, outside of Damen’s memories and starkly in front of him sent a jolt through his ribs that he felt like a punch. This was the first time that Laurent had properly undressed for him, every other time and thing that they had done not requiring more than a slip of Damen’s hand or a tug of his clothing. This part of Laurent had always been concealed from him and everyone else, only for Laurent to see.

Damen looked up. Laurent’s expression was even but his cheeks were very pink, his entire face flushed scarlet. Damen was still holding him, touching the lettering like the small symbols would jump out at him. His chest hurt.

“You kept it,” Damen said.

His voice had come out rough. He had no shield against it, no excuse for the way this was making him feel. He remembered his own comment on the translation when he’d first seen it, the ink newly fresh and tender. _The original meaning is to tame._ And he remembered Laurent’s response, shyly given. _That’s the point._

“Yes, well,” Laurent said, pulling away. Damen let him; too raw to do anything else, watching as Laurent began to shove his legs into the jumpsuit. “It’s not like you didn’t keep yours.”

Damen’s fingers went to his nape like it was reflex, which he supposed it almost was. Sometimes it was like could feel the laurels tattooed onto the back of his neck, flaring his skin and keeping him awake at night. They were always there, even when he couldn’t see them. Just like Laurent.

“I’ve been here for the past few years,” Damen said, letting his hand drop. “I didn’t exactly have a tattoo remover handy.”

Laurent had been turned around to reach for Damen’s shirt when he spoke, craned in his position with an extended arm. He remained that way, fingers curled around the crumpled sleeve, before silently pulling it towards him.

“No,” he said, a few moments after dropping the shirt onto Damen’s lap. He still wasn’t looking at him, not as Damen pulled the shirt back on and not as they lifted themselves from the floor, righting themselves. Laurent was dusting himself off, eyeing the corners of the room like he was about to tidy things up. Damen waited until he’d finished closing the last button before he stepped forward, towards him.

“Laurent,” Damen said, wanting Laurent to look at him. He needed him to look at him. And when he did Damen said, solemnly, “I would never.”


	4. Chapter 4

Laurent made mistakes when he was acting on emotion. He knew this about himself. 

But Damen wasn’t a mistake, and Laurent wasn’t acting on emotion. If anything, he was acting on the years following a mistake that had been made because of emotion. It all seemed very confusing, but in actuality it wasn’t, because it always boiled down to this: Somewhere throughout his life, Laurent had done something to get a second chance with Damen. He may not have deserved him, but somehow he had him, and Laurent didn’t think he had the strength to let go again.

It was going to blow up in Laurent’s face, as things tended to for him. That was the hand Laurent had been dealt time after time, and it was so sure that it was almost a morbid comfort. Things were dangled before him, close enough to hold, and then snatched away so abruptly that the slap of it was almost as strong as everything prior to it. 

His mother’s cancer that took her from him when he’d just been a boy, too small to climb up onto her big bed without assistance. Auguste’s accident. The naive, misguided trust of family. Damen with his head lowered, cuffed and led through mobs while words flashed endlessly across Laurent’s screen: _Renowned gangster Damianos V - caught and detained in Ios - Years of crimes - millions of dollars - charges of - facing up to –_ And Laurent with his head in his hands, chasing the burn of regret down with Damen’s favored brand of whiskey that he’d selected to punish himself. 

In retrospect, it might have been a good thing that Hennike never saw him past his boyhood. The thought of Laurent’s mother knowing who he grew up to be brought him shame. 

Laurent was aware that this was just the cycle repeating. He didn’t care. He never did anything without motive, without thinking three steps ahead, but there were no other steps anymore, only Damen. That thought had scared him once, terrified him into making the biggest mistake of his life, but he wouldn’t do it again. If Damen wanted to have him, any part of him, then he would.

The first time Damen sat across from Laurent with a deck in his hands and no supposed pretext, Laurent had been so noticeably shocked that it made Damen laugh. He considered that that might have been the purpose of it, to throw Laurent off or to put him on some kind of alert, but then Damen gave the cards a practiced shuffle and dropped them in front of Laurent, telling him to deal. 

Stupefied, Laurent did as he was told. They played a few rounds of an old Veretian game that Laurent had once taught him, the very same that he knew a teenage Auguste would often play for money. Damen was better than he used to be. He was quicker on the uptake and on spotting Laurent’s tells, but he still refused to cheat, despite underhanded moves being one of the biggest parts of the game. If there was one thing that remained consistent throughout this alternate universe they were living in, it was that Damen was still a walking contradiction. 

It all confused Laurent. He thought of the other times they’d been alone together, fully clothed. The yard had been a bump in. The meal had been out of their hands, decided for them. Damen’s cell had been Laurent’s doing. Damen could have left any of those instances, but he also hadn’t initiated them. Not like this.

Laurent didn’t know what forces were moving in Damen, if he was ignoring his feelings or experiencing new ones. His mood was as unpredictable as ever. There were times he was calm and amenable, and it was almost easy to forget. His guilt about the past, or about what he was doing now. And then there were others where he was short tempered and cross, and Laurent would remind himself that it was Damen who had to have the control now. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with that.

It felt as if he was somewhere in between that day, behind that same shed in the yard. Laurent rarely saw Damen outside, knowing that those hours were mainly reserved to him for exercise or business. But Damen had needed to sift through a stack of rumpled cash, and Laurent had needed a cigarette, and it was the simple pleasures that brought people together.

“Who are you even getting those from?” Damen asked without looking up as his fingers moved fast though flashing numbers. He had a toothpick between his lips.

Laurent couldn’t believe how much he missed the sight of money. He wanted to fill his pockets with it and feel it grow after a night of bets and wins, to splay it out on a bedspread and count it with Damen, before pushing him down on it. He would have even settled for the child’s play of rounding a packed room and slipping it out of back pockets. 

He let out a lungful of smoke. “Are you asking me to squeal on your competition?” 

“It’s not my competition if I’m not offering it,” Damen said, starting again. Laurent wondered if he was thinking the same thing, or if that was just him pushing his luck. “And I know everyone who sells, I’m just wondering who you deal with.”

Laurent watched as ash fell. He was careful to not let it speck his pants. “Rouart.”

That gave Damen an odd look. He turned his head. “You give him money?”

“Well,” Laurent’s lip quirked. “It’s certainly not my virtue.” 

Damen didn’t find the comment as humorous. Laurent took another drag, not interested in discerning his expression. 

“Ancel turned me to him,” He said. “His form of payment is the real wild card.”

“Ancel.” Damen mulled the name over, like he couldn’t figure the tart redhead out. “He’s not what you’d expect.”

“No,” Laurent agreed. He’d seen Ancel offer a number of different things in exchange for something as simple as television time, but he didn’t seem perturbed by any of it. Enthusiastic, if anything. He couldn’t see Damen being drawn to him, but he knew Damen could appreciate ambition. It came in many forms.

“Do you remember –“ Damen said, before abruptly stopping himself. His lips were edged in what looked like the beginning of a smile, and Laurent had to stop himself from returning the look without even knowing the root of it. The words caught up, and the fact that Damen had been on the verge of reminiscence made his stomach twist. He maintained a blank stare as he waited, and even that felt like holding back. 

“Just,“ Damen started again, his tone different. “That man from the bordello in Thrace, the Patran one we would send Aden to. Ancel would have been perfect.”

Laurent looked forward, thinking of that. It didn’t surprise him that Damen thought the way he did, comparing everything to their past and how it would fit in today. What surprised him was that he was vocalizing it with him. 

“When he went into the wrong room.” Laurent couldn’t stop that grin.

“And we had to find him, and –“ and this time when Damen paused, it was so he could laugh.

Laurent stilled with his cigarette halfway to his lips, unable to look away if he tried. He’d seen Damen scoff, he’d seen him mutter a laughter to himself or shortly at the expense of Laurent, but he’d yet to see him react like this, open and genuine, sharing this with Laurent. 

It made his eyes seem brighter, or maybe that was just the light around him. It emphasized the sunken dimple in his left cheek, the one that Laurent had dolefully thought of pressing his lips to. The sound of it was guileless; Laurent didn’t want the moment to end.

It was a few seconds before Damen let himself calm down, though it felt like far more. He rolled the money over once, slipping the bundle into his front pocket. “Nikandros almost strangled him,” he said, sounding fond. 

“Nikandros,” Laurent said, after taking his own second to gather himself. “Is that why he’s here? To handle those situations?”

“Are you insinuating that I had Nikandros get himself arrested?” He furrowed his brow. “And that I can’t handle those situations myself?” It was unclear which suggestion unsettled him more. 

“More far fetched things have happened,” Laurent said. He was mostly kidding.

Damen huffed out a breath, petulantly. He slumped back against the shed. “Nikandros made his own set of mistakes. Getting sent here was dumb luck.” He shook his head. “Like he would purposely go to prison for me.” 

Laurent stubbed the cigarette out in the dirt, giving his own head a small shake. “You underestimate what people would do for you.”

Visitations were held every Sunday. They were like a holiday for some. Something to look forward to, a time to spend with friends and family. To catch up, to tell each other stories and seek out a distraction from the perversion they were surrounded by. The problem was, most people here didn’t have friends and family. Or at least, none that cared to come visit them.

Damen wasn’t quite that person, though he supposed he fell somewhere in the middle. Both of his parents were dead. Jokaste wouldn’t step into a men’s prison with a gun held to her head, and nearly anyone else Damen would want to see was in here with him. All that left was his brother.

Damen had been at a table with Elon and Aktis, slouched back in his seat with his eyes closed when a CO came to get him. He was busy pretending he was anywhere else, back in the ring or speeding down a highway, and he couldn’t be bothered to lift his head at Guion’s voice. 

“Damianos,” he said. Damen tolerated the kick to his chair. “You’re late for visitation.”

“I’m not expecting anyone,” Damen muttered. 

“Well, he looks like you, and he’s asking for you,” he said. “Come on.”

Damen definitely hadn’t been anticipating that. He’d had a few lawyers who’d tried to take a case with him, the ambitious sorts or ones who’d simply wanted to make a name out of themselves through him. A woman or two who’d acted like his long lost lover who Damen couldn’t even recall the names of. Men he’d struck deals with in the past, wanting to see if he was interested in importing. 

Kastor coming to see his younger brother had never been a set thing. He’d never visited enough for Damen to set some kind of a schedule in his mind, so he never knew when or if to expect him. Sometimes he liked it that way, the unexpected aspect of it. Most times, he didn’t think about it.

The visitation area was small. They’d once been allowed personal time around the civility of a table, physical contact and the freedom to pretend, but that had ended about a year back when the guards had caught wind of drugs being smuggled in through greeting kisses. That revoked privilege had led them to a narrow room, a row of windows and a phone to hear each other from. 

“Fifth seat,” Charls said, stationed by the door with a clipboard in front of him. Guards monitoring the visitation room wore a white button down uniform rather than the standard black. It was the brightest thing in the room.

The interactions around him all varied. A woman on the opposite end had her hand pressed up to the window, like the separation of glass would be dispelled by symmetry. An older man one row down from her held two children on his lap. Damen pulled his chair out.

Kastor was leaning forward on the counter with his arms crossed in front of him. He’d been looking around despite nothing having changed since the last time, not quite rushed to stop his observations when Damen came into view. That was fine, it gave Damen the opportunity to take him in. 

Kastor’s hair was shorter at the sides. His beard was fuller than it had been when he’d last seen him. That was – three months ago? Four? It was hard to tell when time jumbled together, but it made little difference to Damen. It was still strange to see his brother. Good.

Damen took the phone off the base without looking, bringing it to his ear. Kastor did the same, holding it there with the heel of his hand. He looked like their father. 

“It’s good to see you,” Damen said, speaking first.

Kastor looked back at him, a little foggy through the dirty glass. Damen wondered how he looked to his older brother, how they both looked to anyone watching in. 

Kastor dipped his chin in agreement. “You too,” he said, voice crackling through the line. It wasn’t the same. Kastor’s voice was deeper in person. 

His fingers rapped against the paneling of the window. He looked around again, eyeing someone standing behind Damen. It was likely a guard, Damen didn’t turn to look. “How are things?”

“What you’d expect.” Kastor had been in his own share of facilities when he was Damen’s age, even younger. There was nothing Damen could offer to shock him. “Slow. Mundane.” 

“And everything is working out with – “ he tilted his chin again. “You know.”

It was almost offensive. “Of course,” Damen said. He waved a hand in a short circle. “It’s a seller’s market these days.”

Kastor lips twitched. It was as nice to see as it was rare.

“What about you?” Damen leaned in. “How is everyone?”

Kastor’s response came in shoulder movements and mixed expressions. “Not much to say. Jokaste works a lot. Euandros hates every kind of food. Kids are fucking draining.”

Damen thought of what he told Laurent about Kastor’s new position. He tried to picture Kastor in a nine-to-five sort of situation, and the concept alone made Damen bored out of his skull. He empathized. “Do you need any help?

“From you?” That made Kastor’s dark eyes draw together in a pinch. “From where, your jail cell?”

Damen eyed Charls as best as he could without turning his head. “You know what I mean,” he said. He had no idea how connected his brother still was, or how much he’d meant it when he’d said he was out. “There are accounts –“

“I don’t _need_ -“ Kastor cut himself off. He was still folded over, the strain of his arms caused the tattoo on his bicep to flex. He removed the phone from his ear, using the fingers that were holding it to rub at his temples before bringing it back. When he spoke again, it was lower. “You wouldn’t even understand it.”

Damen heard the irate tone and recognized it for what it was, in ways he might have once not. He remembered the way Kastor walked when Jokaste became pregnant; similar to the first time a large score had followed his own set of plans. Like he’d finally proven himself, even though he’d never needed to prove anything to Damen. It was the opposite, if anything. Damen could vividly recall the first time he’d shot a gun, fifteen, and the way the impact of it had thrown him off his feet and caused him to miss his mark tremendously. Kastor had laughed, and told him to stop focusing on looking cool, and showed him how to properly hold it.

“You’re right,” Damen said. “I wouldn’t.”

He stretched his neck back, rolling his head and relaxing his body. It was rare that they could do this, have any amount of time together, especially when it came straight from Kastor. He didn’t want to waste it with their stalling back and forth. Damen shrugged his shoulders, looking at his brother.

“Tell me about a recent game,” he said. “How are the Lions doing?”

The prison library was an unpredictably populated place. It was a fishbowl of sorts, a good spot to go to see all the different kinds of people you’d find here. The books weren’t worth much in terms of engrossment but they offered a distraction nonetheless. Men came here for deals, or for shelter from the overall abrasiveness they were trying to escape. One on one tutoring from the GED program was sometimes offered in the library, which was the only time a guard was posted inside. Other than that, like today, they were posted outside. 

Damen didn’t know what he was doing there that afternoon. Seeing Kastor earlier had left him in a strange mood, and he didn’t exactly feel like blending back in with everyone else just yet. It was odd to him that the world kept going on outside while he was stuck behind a wall, and it was like his brother symbolized all of those thoughts. So much of him was familiar to Damen. His dry laughter, the straight line of his jaw. And yet, he was a different person.

Damen didn’t resent his brother for his freedom. He wanted that for Kastor. It was the reminder that life just went on without him. Everyone was living while he was stuck in this cage, existing.

His legs just seemed to carry him. Damen knew he likely wouldn’t be bothered here, and that he could just stand between the stacks and breathe. He’d passed an older man pouring over a law book, and the scent of smoke from somewhere close by was so obvious that even that managed to rankle him. It wouldn’t surprise Damen if one of these idiots plopped down at a table with their legs kicked up and blew smoke in a guard’s face. He grabbed a book off a shelf at random, ready to throw himself into a chair and waste the remaining time of his free block staring blankly at words.

He surveyed the room with a quick sweep of his eye, fingers pressing around the spine. There weren’t that many options to begin with, and he knew he’d need to sit with people unless he made someone get up, which was always an option. His choices were a group of men who worked custodial nightly and were rarely sober, which Damen had little patience for in that moment. There was Isander who would definitely get flustered if Damen sat down. Two siblings who Damen rarely saw apart, and were rumored to be in for murdering their younger brother in the first degree. Laurent and Torveld.

Damen squinted. He hadn’t noticed him when coming in, but he knew for a fact that he hadn’t walked by any empty tables. He supposed he could have come in after Damen had, there was certainly nothing alluring enough about Torveld to catch the eye.

Torveld stopped in the middle of whatever it was he was saying, lifting his eyes a fraction like he couldn’t be bothered. He seemed taken aback to see that it was Damen standing there at the table, like it was out of the ordinary for Damen to approach him or for them to share space.

It was, maybe. Damen and Torveld were on safe terms, but they didn’t tend to associate or run in similar circles. Still, his look of being put out by the added company didn’t sit right with Damen.

“Damen,” Torveld said. “Hello.”

His tone was genial enough. They were bent close together. Laurent seemed perfectly comfortable as he was, his fingers closed into a fist with his cheek leaning against it, lifting the skin up a bit. Torveld was leaning into him, close enough that whatever it was they were speaking about would be just between them. He didn’t seem inclined to change his position, like he expected Damen to retreat briefly and leave them to resume their conversation.

Damen sat. 

“Hi,” he replied. He stretched his legs out as far as they would go, propping one ankle on top of the other. “May I?” 

Two thin lines appeared between his eyebrows. “Well, we were actually in the middle of something,” Torveld said. “But I see you’ve helped yourself.” 

Laurent lifted the fingers his face was pressed against in a slow wave before closing them again.

“I’m sorry,” Damen said. He assumed that was what Torveld wanted to hear, second to a departure. He considered his obvious reluctance to straighten himself out and added, “I had a difficult visitation.” Was that what people said when they wanted pity? He wasn’t sure, so he shrugged his shoulders and conjured up the most sheepish look he could muster. He then averted his eyes, not entirely confident in his ability to look remorseful. 

“Oh.” Torveld said it with a different kind of frown, though Damen was pretty sure he still didn’t care all that much. But Damen knew Torveld to be civil and decent and unlikely to outwardly reject someone, even if it was only for his own public image. The difference didn’t matter to Damen, because ether one still served Torveld a growing amount of distance and the resigned look of one’s pursuits being thwarted. 

“Well,” Laurent said, after not batting an eye at Damen’s predicament. “Torveld was just telling me about the Vaskian traditions he’d picked up when he’d served there. The culture is fascinating.”

Torveld watched Laurent as he spoke with a long, adoring look that brought Damen’s fingers to a drum against his knee. It was bothersome to see, senseless even. He shouldn’t – you weren’t doing an inmate any favors by looking at them like they hung the moon or like you wanted to devour them. It only made them a target. Torveld should know better than to openly pin his affections on Laurent.

He bit his tongue. Turned his head. “Vask,” he said. “Really.”

Laurent made an insubstantial hum of agreement. “Have you ever been?”

Damen had been to Vask a number of times, each of them with Laurent. “I have,” he said. “I went with a friend.”

“Have you ever gone, Laurent?” Torveld asked. And then without waiting for a response, “you would enjoy it there. It’s especially beautiful in the springtime. The mountains make for a wonderful view.”

Laurent’s fingers moved farther back, playing with the ends of his hair. “All those years of service,” he said, with the slightest lilt. “You must enjoy a good hike.”

Torveld’s eyes grew even warmer, like a pool of hot wax. It seemed inevitable, as if the liquid reaction was out of his hands. 

The last time Damen had seen Laurent, he’d sucked at the hollow of his throat and moved his fingers inside him until he came with a broken whimper. Damen wondered what would happen if he told Torveld that, just for fun. He probably wouldn’t smile as much. 

“Where were you stationed?” Damen asked. 

The way Torveld looked at Damen gave him the faint impression that he’d just remembered he was there. Or like he was trying to forget. He pursed his lips as if the question was some kind of challenge. It wasn’t. Damen respected the principles of soldiery. 

“Ver-Tan.”

Damen hadn’t been to that province, though his time spent in Vask had been far from political. Damen took the man in, trying to imagine him in any kind of armed scenario. Torveld was an attractive man with around twenty years on Damen, looking more like a refined politician than a combatant. The idea of what he could do in his prime piqued the far ends of Damen’s interest. 

Someone called Torveld’s name before Damen could comment on it. Three heads turned to see Guerin standing at the cross of two bookshelves, waving his fingers forward. “Your brother is looking for you.”

Torveld’s body made a small pivot. “Torgier?” he said. “I’m sure it can wait.”

Guerin raised a brow. “It can’t.” 

That seemed to do the trick. Damen might have been interested if he wasn’t so aware of what this meant. He checked himself, tampering down any reaction as Torveld sucked in a breath of air, lowering his hands to the table. He set very regretful eyes on Laurent. “Older brothers,” he said, by way of explanation. “Always so impatient.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Laurent said.

“An only child?” 

Guerin’s knuckles came down on the edge of the table. Torveld sighed at the impact with another resigned look. “I’m sorry.” He stood, straightening his clothing. “Another time.”

Neither of them watched as Torveld walked away, though his resentment could be sensed by everyone from here to Patras. Damen lounged back in his spot and kept his gaze forward, just as the doors slammed shut.

“A difficult visitation?” Laurent said.

“A hike?” Damen threw back.

Laurent was unruffled. He cast a vague gesture to the seat Torveld had been occupying. “He seems fun.” His voice was sugared. “Why not?” 

Damen narrowed his eyes. “He’s in here for _tax evasion._ You’d be bored in minutes.”

Laurent smiled at the table. It was unexpected, and sincere.

“There’s more to life than the thrill of crime,” he said.

Not that much more. There was family, which he now knew Laurent no longer had. There was survival, which he knew Laurent would always fight for without anyone’s help. There were the people you chose to share that thrill with.

“You could do much better than Torveld.” 

That seemed to intrigue Laurent. “Can I?” 

It would be arrogance, coming from anyone else. It was a bit of arrogance from Laurent, but he was also really asking. Laurent was beautiful, and unattainable. He was vicious and conniving and unparalleled to anyone Damen had ever met. It was a ridiculous question. 

“Yes,” Damen said. 

He watched as Laurent let that penetrate. Damen knew from experience when Laurent had a response ready at hand, and so he knew what he was seeing was not what to say, but how to say it.

“I would think,” Laurent said, tracing the point of the table with his fingertip. “That you wouldn’t believe in those things happening more than once.”

And like Laurent, Damen’s response was just as clear.

“I don’t,” he said.

Like all other things, prison went on. 

To call it a routine felt inadequate. Incarceration wasn’t exactly on par with a gym regime or a work agenda, but the silhouette of it wasn’t far off. It was the same thing every day. The same faces, the same schedule. It left Laurent restless to have nothing to do, but he’d long ago resigned himself to the fact that this was going to be his fate for quite some time, to simply flow with the days like bark running down a river. It was why he knew that he needed to find those small oppositions, and to latch onto them. Those things were often what kept you sane.

Orlant was released from solitary. It had happened during tier time, a questionable move in Laurent’s opinion. He thought it might be a bit much for someone to go from an unidentifiable amount of time with nothing but four walls and a slot in the door to masses of people and noise coming in on all ends, but Orlant seemed to handle it like a veteran.

They’d been in Rochert’s cell on the ground level when the radio announcement went off - _Inmate 78656 transferring back into genpop_ \- and the gates came open to let him in, Berenger walking behind him to unlock his cuffs. A few men in passing had slapped him on the shoulder, Lazar whooping from the beam above them. Jord didn’t get up from his spot on the ground, but he’d raised a hand when Orlant came in with a look of lassitude in his eyes.

That had been three days ago. That little distinction was a small spark in Laurent’s week, shelved up there with other ones like finding a book in the library that wasn’t entirely terrible, swindling an inmate three times his age in a game of Piques, and getting Damen to smile at something he said.

He was choosing to focus on those moments. There would always be other reliabilities like making eye contact while using the bathroom, regular comments of how much friendlier he’d be with a cock down his throat, and the constant reminder that this was his foreseeable life. 

Part of that life: count. It didn’t bother Laurent like it did other inmates, who he knew really allowed it to get under their skin. He wasn’t sure if it was the clinical manner of it, or the way it treated them like numbers rather people. Perhaps they just didn’t like the added situations of being told what to do. The reason was irrelevant when the outcome was the same, and so every day Laurent endured it while he felt men simmer around him.

As far as Laurent knew, there was nothing specific about that day that caused things to tip over. For him it was the same as any other, like all the numberless times he’d been pulled out of a stupor or interrupted in the middle of an exchange by the sound of the main gate rolling open, any one of the guards coming out.

“Heads up, cons!” Makon yelled. His voice boomed loud and reached every cell. “Count time. Stand your gate!”

Laurent had been on his side when he heard it. He was tracing a line in the cinderblock by his head and reciting old passcodes he’d once needed for a few offshore accounts when the call came. It was four on the dot like every midday count, and was followed by the familiar sound of every other cell coming open.

Lazar was somewhere around his fiftieth sit-up when Laurent turned over onto his back. He was up first, breaths a little labored, but otherwise unaffected as he shuffled outside and pressed his back to the wall. Laurent followed close behind, taking the left side. 

They couldn’t speak to each other. It could take up to half an hour for the guards to make every round, saying each name and ticking off each box, and then to repeat the same on the next level up, and the next one after that, and so on. They were to remain inert for the entire process. From his vantage, Laurent could see what a challenge it posed for the most restless ones. 

Ultimately, it was Stavos who started it all.

It was silent in the cellblock, the same weighty motionlessness as there always was at this point of the day. Laurent always took the opportunity to survey his surroundings, to see who put their focus where, and it was precisely why he saw that first step out of line.

Stavos came forward with a few unbothered strides. The casual manner of it and the placement of his arms showed all that would look that he wasn’t bothered. It wasn’t the first time someone stepped out, so Makon barely turned his head to the direction of his cell and said, “Stavos, back on your number.”

He didn’t listen. Also not a first, and so Makon placed his hand on his belt, nothing casual about it and said, “Inmate! I said get back to your cell.”

If Stavos was concerned, it didn’t show. It was at that point that Laurent noticed a few other men take their own steps backwards as if they had been directed, retreating back into their cell like they could feel the same energy in the air as Laurent could. It was just as reprehensible, technically, but no one was paying them any attention when an inmate three rows down from Stavos stepped forward as well.

_”Inmates –“_

Laurent stood up straighter. His eyes bounced, frantically, searching for something that he knew didn’t matter, because there was nothing he could do about anything that was about to happen.

It was in those few moments of distraction where the first yell came, a loud call that was followed by a rumble of feet. Laurent’s gaze snapped back on the ground the instant he heard it, but there would be no telling of who started the charge. Not anymore.

All it took was the smallest spark to ignite something flammable. In prison, the wrong look to a stranger was the same thing as dousing the building in gasoline and watching it go up in flames. 

Men were rushing forward in all directions, enough that colors were blurring and it was unclear who was running to attack or to seek refuge from it. One inmate threw himself onto another with enough force that they slid on the ground and into a stranger’s cell, and whoever had already been occupying that cell took the opportunity to unleash a series of kicks on both grappling men. On the far left of the block, a cry tore out of someone so loudly that it had to come from more than just fists. 

Like a flame snaking up a vine, the chaos didn’t start and stop at the ground level. The men didn’t need a reason, just an excuse. They saw what was happening at their feet and felt spurred on by the madness, like a drug infused into their veins just by the piercing sound of violence in their ears. Inmates began to lunge at each other, the beams they stood on shaking as cells filled, emptied, bodies becoming distortions. 

“ _Inmates, back in your cells!_ ” 

Lazar was gone. It was the first thing Laurent noticed as he whipped his head to the side, though he didn’t have the time to spare to contemplate if that was his own doing or if he’d been taken down by someone else. There was a man coming Laurent’s way, a significantly larger man who Laurent knew he had no chance of taking in some form of a wrestling match. The inmate was coming at him with quick, aimless determination in his eyes, and it was reflex that had Laurent throwing his hands up at his sides and shaking his head erratically. 

He then pivoted, and turned in time to watch as the man’s momentum threw him onto the beam Laurent had been leaning on and off the edge, tumbling down.

Laurent was running before the man hit the ground. It was impossible to keep away from everything, too loud to will away and too budding for the guards to tamper down. They had pulled out the instant it became clear that things weren’t going to come to an amiable end, hiding behind the gate and calling for backup to anyone who would listen.

Laurent didn’t know if the entire riot was premeditated, or if a few inmates had personal grievances to carry out and knew that it would be supported by groups of people who were surely itching for a chance to fight, even if it was anonymous. That was what this was, there was no other way to put it. It was unclear at what moment exactly the fighting had become so unsystematic, but there was no longer anything pointed about it. The men were simply scrambling, throwing fists and pouncing on whatever target was closest, taking advantage of the turmoil to release all of their built up tension on whatever, whoever they could get their hands on.

“ _Stop!_ ” Someone yelled, the voice fading away as Laurent passed down the row of cells. “ _Don’t, please -_ ”

Laurent slipped on what had to be blood. His ankle twisted, throwing him off balance and causing something to thump inside his chest. His back hit the ground in a way that knocked the wind out from his lungs. He struggled to gasp in a breath as a wrist slung out to where his neck had just been. 

Coughing, Laurent jutted his legs out and went straight for the inmate’s knee. He knew he couldn’t get up just yet and there was no stupider mistake than going down when your opponent still stood, and he utilized the short moment to roll onto his side and avoid the collision of his body.

Footsteps pounded around them as they tangled. A siren was beginning to go off overhead as the man threw a leg over and held himself above Laurent, leering at him. He looked like he’d already been in a fight that day. ”You’ll enjoy this,” he said, before driving his fist down.

The closed hit landed into the right side of Laurent’s jaw, hard, and it was enough to snap his head to the side and press his cheek into the reverberating platform.

Laurent’s head rang alongside the whirling voices and the alarm, flashing in and out of his concentration. It was difficult to recognize the man through the long hair in his face and the way his features were spinning, and he barely managed to swivel his neck and avoid an equal hit on the other side.

The sirens were getting louder. Something slammed against a gate, followed by a long whistle. Somewhere in the hysteria, there was cheering. 

The swing of Laurent’s hand was caught with ease, as was the second. His teeth ground together as he felt thumbs press unforgivingly into the veins running down his wrists, the inmate’s grin limpid as he moved Laurent’s hand down his body. Slowly, very slowly.

Laurent forced himself to relax. He reminded himself to breathe, to stay present, before lunging his knee up as hard as he could.

The inmate’s features screwed up in a way that made him even more indistinguishable as he had been before. Laurent didn’t hesitate to use the opportunity to drive his released fist into the man’s throat, and then to kick with force right back between his thighs. 

_”Stand down!”_

The inmate covered his mouth like he was going to gag as he rolled onto his back, muffling a string of curses through a reddened expression. Laurent’s throat burned as he pushed himself up, hand scraping up the wall, trying to blink the haziness out of his eyes.

He kept going.

It wasn’t fuzziness from being hit. Laurent realized this as he began coughing in another strong fit, needing to press his face into his forearm and grab the edge of a poll. Something had been thrown in through the perimeter gates that was letting out clouds of what looked like smoke. It was causing men around him to fall onto their knees and cover their faces, other men who were still running tripping over them and slamming into one another.

Laurent wasn’t sure what unit he was in anymore. He kept his eyes squinted as he looked around, trying to latch onto anyone, but the only thing he could recognize was Jord on the main ground, the entire back of his jumpsuit torn open, shaking Huet’s body in a frenzy.

Cells were beginning to clang shut. There was pandemonium everywhere Laurent turned, and so many tossed, bloodied weapons and limp inmates that Laurent was sure he was going to retch. He couldn’t go back yet, he needed to find him – 

Another burst of smoke blew out around them and blackened his vision.

Laurent fell back to his knees.

Damen pushed himself up from his knees.

It had taken him far longer than he’d liked and he was grateful that it was only Nikandros who saw him like that, too weak and dizzy to take the few steps to his bunk. Everyone else was either too injured to focus on anyone else, hiding in their cells like someone was going to rise back up and pull the bars apart, or lying in a pool of their own blood.

“I really don’t know what to say to you gentlemen,” Herode had said, down below from his spot in the middle of the block. Damen had been crouched with his forehead against the wall when he’d entered, Nikandros not too far off in his own slump.

“I try to give you the benefit of the doubt,” he’d gone on. “I try to treat you with respect.” A pause. “But you can’t even respect yourselves.” 

It was rare that the warden came out of his tower and into the block, usually operating from his office where he had inmates brought to him. The main occasions where he ventured out was when he had disheartening news to deliver to the inmates, a death, usually, and he came to deliver it at the doorstep of their personal cell. And then there were occasions like these.

“There’s going to be a forty-eight hour lockdown,” the warden continued, speaking succinctly. “No meals, no showers, no visitation.” Damen’s fingers had pushed into his eyes, moaning roughly. 

“And I strongly suggest that you all learn to get along,” Herode added, stopping in place from where he’d been pacing. He was notably old, frail, but if he held fear over the matter of stepping around tossed out mattresses and shanks that had yet to be collected, a few singular men standing at the gates with their fingers wrapped around metal, he didn’t show it. His cheeks were stained red with anger. Or maybe it was just disappointment. 

“Otherwise the time after that it’s going to be a week, and the time after that a month. Think about it,” he said, nodding to a guard, and then the main gate had opened for him. He kept his back turned on the inmates like he couldn’t bear to look at them, like a father who didn’t know how to handle his boys who kept on letting him down. Damen thought things would be a lot easier on his heart if he just lowered his expectations of them.

He stood up now, bracing his weight against the wall and shaking his head out, clearing away the remaining wooziness. He tested his jaw, shifted his weight, patted a hand against his body for any open wounds. He was fine.

“Are you all right?” he asked Nikandros, who spit into the sink.

“Yeah,” Nikandros said, wiping his mouth off with the side of his arm. “Yeah. Nothing I haven’t handled before. You?”

“I’m good,” Damen said. He took a seat on Nikandros’ bunk, nudging his boots off and kicking them under. There would be no medical in those forty-eight hours, save for the very few men who were literally on the brink of death. Everyone else was either tough enough to power through, or they were already dead. “Nothing that will kill me.”

And admittedly, a part of Damen had enjoyed it. A ferine part that he didn’t know how to gauge, and had long ago stopped trying to. The stripping of false niceties and the ability to unlock everything that had been boiling inside him, the primal explosion that felt like shedding his skin. It had felt raw, and untamed, and like slipping on his old boxing gloves and returning to his roots.

Damen didn’t need a riot as an excuse to extract some kind of a vendetta, but he wouldn’t pass up a good pretense either. He had Meniados’ blood under his fingernails to show for that.

But it wasn’t all glory and gore to Damen. He’d seen an Akielon inmate grab a young, terrified looking boy by the collar and slash a stark line across his clavicle, and Damen hadn’t registered the decision to move until he found himself in the man’s cell, returning the favor with his fingers wrapped around his neck.

It was like he’d operated on autopilot. That was the only way Damen could account for every moment he’d come back to himself to see that his surroundings had changed, his opponents different. Laurent used to call it blacking out. 

Laurent. He had been there the entire time, at the forefront of Damen’s mind alongside the pulsating force of survival. It was Laurent that moved Damen’s legs through the disarray, keeping his arms swinging and his guard up. Damen couldn’t see him, couldn’t find him anywhere he looked, yet every hit Damen took was received with hedonistic pleasure because it only meant it was one less person harming Laurent.

It was for nothing in the end, because he still found himself tossed in his cell, useless and clueless for forty-eight fucking hours.

“Give me your arm,” Nikandros said, prompting Damen to stop rubbing at his face and look forward. He was crouched in front of the bunk, a piece of cloth he’d ripped off an undershirt in his hand. Damen blinked down at his skin, watching as a line of crimson snaked around the shadows of ink. He hadn’t noticed that he was bleeding.

He reached for the scrap of fabric, but Nikandros only hit the gesture away with an exasperated look.

“I can bandage a wound,” Damen said, annoyed, reaching for it again.

Nikandros ignored him, shifting his weight to his other leg and pulling Damen’s arm in front of him. There was only one other person who would disregard Damen like that.

“I don’t need a doctor,” Damen said. He could hear the petulance in his own voice. He thought it was justified by the fact that he was being treated like a child.

“No,” Nikandros agreed, removing the cloth from between his teeth after wiping the wound as clean as he could. The sides of Damen’s arms were still caked and dirty, nothing he couldn’t wash away on his own. He didn’t otherwise acknowledge Damen. 

Damen bit his words down. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d bind an injury with one hand, he wasn’t an amateur, but Nikandros was unshakably stubborn when he wanted to be. He pushed an elbow onto his knee and hung his body forward, letting it happen.

Nikandros worked in silence. His expression was placid as he made a careful knot, and neither of them gave any reaction as he tugged hard enough that the fabric strained, securing it firmly. He reached for the dampened roll of toilet paper.

“He’s fine,” Nikandros said.

Something stirred inside Damen, somewhere he couldn’t reach. It was faint, like the wings of a butterfly fluttering inside his throat. His eyes moved to the bars of their cell.

“I saw him,” Nikandros went on, in that neutral tone he always spoke in. Nikandros’ emotions always came through his eyes, rather his voice. Damen kept his eyes on the block. “Towards the end. He made it out.”

The feeling intensified. Damen worried that if he would open his mouth to respond, everything else would come out with it. 

He didn’t know what kind of response Nikandros wanted from him. What could he even say? That hearing that Laurent was safe wasn’t enough, that he needed to see his glare and feel his heartbeat for himself? That the memory of every fallen person he’d seen, every second of not yet knowing who they were wasn’t going to go away until he saw Laurent whole in front of him?

Or maybe that Damen knew the magnitude of the mistake he’d made, and that he no longer cared. He should have known that there was no black and white with him. It had been Laurent who’d taught him that, after all. They didn’t know how to give each other an inch; the metric didn’t exist with them. They only had miles, endless stretches where the entire world flowed between them.

And maybe Damen did know that. There had never been any chance that he could give Laurent just parts of himself. If that life existed, he hadn’t lived it yet. 

He returned his gaze to Nikandros. He was seated on the ground, an arm wrapped around his drawn up knees. He’d removed the top of his jumpsuit and wore only a thin shirt.

“What do you want me to say?”

Nikandros seemed to think he’d received a response, because he nodded. He rubbed at the side of his forehead as he said, after a pause, “you could explain it.”

“Explain,” Damen repeated, after an equally long pause. 

“You know.” Nikandros seemed as off put suggesting this as Damen was receiving it. “Make me understand.”

Damen couldn’t stop staring at him. It wasn’t sarcasm, Nikandros hardly bothered with that. It wasn’t interest either, it couldn’t be. If Laurent had ever been on the list of things Nikandros cared about - and Damen knew that he had – then he’d long ago lost that spot.

“You don’t like him,” Damen said, carefully.

Brown eyes went limpid. “I don’t like what he did.”

That, for some reason, annoyed Damen just as much as Nikandros insisting on bandaging his gash. “And I do?”

“He hurt you,” Nikandros said, like it was news, like it hadn’t been Damen who’d felt like Laurent had taken his lungs with him when he’d disappeared. “He named you, Damen. And then he left –“

“I _know that_.” 

He’d spoken too loudly for the silence that a lockdown came with. He was up, moving, and when he reached the few feet that he was allowed he turned with his hands squeezing the nape of his neck.

“Do you _think -”_ His nails scraped at his skin. “I know. I _know_ what happened. Do you think I could forget?”

Nikandros stayed as he was. He’d swiveled his body, craning his neck back to look at Damen. “And you want him again.”

Damen dropped his hands. They hit his sides numbly. He always wanted Laurent, he always had, and that was the problem. Even when he’d wanted to hurt him, to make him feel the ache Damen had felt and to push him out of his mind, he’d still wanted him. And that was what he couldn’t make Nikandros understand, not when he couldn’t understand it himself. 

It was an unfortunate, confusing reality for the thing that causes your pain to be the same thing that soothes it. It couldn’t be explained, only experienced. It was a dissonance that no one else could know, because there was no one else who loved like Laurent did. In part destruction, and part salvation. 

The lockdown came and went. Lazar had made it through considerably less unscathed than Laurent had, probably because he’d pissed a number of different people off. The damage wasn’t enough to cause Laurent much worry - or anyone who might care if Lazar was seriously harmed, Laurent’s stance on the matter was still up in the air - but it was enough to require more than a cursory glance. Laurent did what he could with the little they had, utilizing what he remembered from too much time alone without a shelter to go back to. 

Lazar accepted the assistance with a refreshing lack of argument, but it was fair to assume that he wouldn’t have asked for it on his own. 

“If you wanted to feel me up a little, you just had to ask,” he’d said on the first night, stripped to the waist with his back presented to Laurent. It wasn’t the first variation of the comment that he’d made, and Laurent ignored it like all the others as he ran a palm down the tight muscles of his back, his broad shoulders. He cleaned around the broken skin and occasionally pressed a thumb over the scatter of blooming bruises, just to hear Lazar hiss. He could tell what marks would fade fine and what would scar from of the lack of immediate medical attention, running too deep for Laurent to properly stitch as things were. 

The remarks would resurface about every time Laurent’s hands would stray to the older marks on Lazar’s body, well out his own reach. Laurent ignored those as well. 

That was about the most eventful the lockdown had gotten, as he was sure the warden intended. They had no food, which Laurent managed. They had no outside communication, which Laurent wouldn’t mind, if his spiraling thoughts weren’t going to drive him straight out of his mind and through the bars of his cage.

Auguste used to commend Laurent on his vast imagination. Laurent had long ago stopped thinking of it as a blessing.

The eventual sound of the buzz signaling the arrival of a guard had never been so loud. Laurent half thought he’d imagined it, even when Chelaut’s voice sounded into the block. 

“Lockdown is over!” he yelled, accompanied by the synchronous sound of hundreds of cells sliding open, one after the other. “Showers are now open. Play nice, or we’re shutting it back down.”

It was going to be a madhouse in the block. Laurent could already hear it, bubbling around and mending into one vibration. The men would be restless and at wit’s end, eager to move and wash the riot off them. Lazar was gone the instant their cell unlocked, and Laurent could only imagine what finding someone now was going to be. Like the riot, thick with commotion. Moving bodies in every direction he took. So many bodies –

Laurent nearly collided into Damen’s chest.

His boots made a protesting sound as he stopped himself short, just shy of running straight into him. Damen looked like he was surprised to see Laurent here, in his own cell. He wasn’t moving, other than the way his throat slowly rolled. Laurent wondered if it was because he could also hear how hard Laurent’s heart was pounding. 

“Damen,” he said, inanely. He felt like everything had finally stopped spinning. “You’re -“ He didn’t finish, not sure how to. _Here? Breathing?_ Silently, they were watching each other. 

Damen kissed him. 

It was far from what Laurent had been expecting, and the only reason he didn’t pull away just from the shock of it was because his head was being held by Damen’s hands. Their mouths met hard enough that he felt Damen’s teeth, like he was trying to draw blood from Laurent’s lips and taste it on his own. The thought made Laurent faint. Either that, or from the fact that he wouldn’t have to go another second praying that Damen was alive. 

When Damen released him it was with the same amount of strength as when he’d pulled him in, forceful enough that Laurent stumbled back a step. A defenseless part of Laurent feared that he might do something like wipe his mouth off with the side of his hand, something gestural to further prove some point. But Damen just stood with his hands at his sides, doing nothing to conceal the way his chest was moving.

Laurent said, trying not to sound stunned, “what was that for?” 

“Shut up,” Damen said, before stepping into the cell and kissing Laurent again. 

He moved them so they were pressed into the narrow spot between the bunks and the protruding end of the bars, as out of general sight as they could be. His hands were on Laurent’s waist and his body was hard, holding Laurent against the wall so he wouldn’t float away.

It was too much. The knowledge of Damen being safe filled Laurent with so much relief that he thought he would choke on it. He felt flooded in it, unable to breathe from gratitude. Damen’s palm moved to his nape, cupping it, gentle enough that Laurent gasped into the kiss. 

When Damen pulled away next, it was slow enough that their lips slid apart, and Laurent would maintain that he had no control over the amount of time it took him to open his eyes.

Damen pressed a fist into the wall by his head, leaning his weight on it. “So,” he said. “You’re alive.”

The wall was steady against the back of Laurent’s head. He breathed out a sound. “So are you.”

“Did you have your doubts?”

Laurent wanted to close his eyes again, so all he could focus on was the sound of Damen’s voice in his ears. 

“Something has to kill one of us at some point,” Laurent said. “Why not a riot?”

Damen kept his hand where it was as he turned his head, looking out onto the visible beams. The guards had cleaned up all that they could while they were locked away, and there was nothing left for the inmates to step around or reutilize as they continued to file themselves away. It was like nothing had happened. 

Damen turned back to him. “I’m not ready to let go yet,” he said.

This time, it was Laurent who pulled him in.

Laurent didn’t always like to stay close after sex.

It had initially been a little incongruous for Damen. As a man with a considerable past, he wasn’t averse to the idea of going on your way after the act, if the particular situation called for it. He’d done it before, more than once. But Laurent was different. Their first time had been in a club, the next in the car on the way back from the club. By the time they’d gotten to a bed and were able to properly take their time with each other, Damen was just as eager for the after where he could hold Laurent close and touch him without a purpose, to learn him in that way too.

But Laurent had pulled away. Damen could still recall the way he’d untangled himself from Damen’s embrace, slipping out from his hold and rolling away. He’d then lifted himself from the mattress, wrapped a sheet around his body and padded his way through the apartment as if it were his own. Damen had remained as he was, not wanting to intrude, and was in the same position that Laurent had left him in when he came back with a cigarette between his lips.

It hadn’t lasted forever. The change had been gradual, little things evolving between them. Laurent would stop turning away. He would inch into the hand Damen had on his hip, or let their ankles bump under the blanket. There had been a time, significant enough that it stood out in his mind, where Laurent had wrapped an arm around Damen and breathed him in.

It may as well have been one of those nights, hidden in a cluttered storeroom in the middle of the day. They were on a dusty floor, the minutes of time they were given ticking away. But Laurent still stayed in Damen’s lap, clinging to him like they were surrounded by silk pillows and bottles of top shelf liquor, glistening through glass casings.

Damen wasn’t complaining. Laurent was particularly sweet like this, boneless in his arms and gentle. It was a rare mode for Laurent, and not one that Damen would willingly pass up. He was running a hand through Laurent’s hair, smoothing it down his scalp in comfortable lassitude. Laurent sighed.

“We should go,” Damen said. He spoke into his ear.

“Yes,” Laurent said. “We should.”

His cheek was soft against Damen’s skin.

“You know,” Damen said, his curled fingers running down Laurent’s spine. “You’ve gotten in a lot less fights than I thought you would.” 

Which wasn’t a lie. Damen had been sure that Laurent was going to instigate an uproar with half of the prison with that dethatched, infuriatingly calm temperament of his, something only he could manage. It wouldn’t have surprised Damen to walk into a cell to find two men fighting because of him with Laurent sitting cross-legged, inspecting his nails.

Laurent didn’t move. When he spoke, each word was shaped against the curve of Damen’s shoulder. “Maybe I’m more docile than you remember.” 

“It’s definitely not that,” Damen said.

He saw Laurent’s shoulder lift a fraction. “Or maybe you just don’t know everything that happens to me here.”

Damen felt his expression narrow. He didn’t like that.

“Anyways.” Laurent chose then to pull away. “If I remember correctly, you were the one who always was prone to altercations, not me.”

He wasn’t so sure about that. “I’d say it was pretty evenly split between us.”

“There was this,” Laurent said, like Damen hadn’t spoken. “From that pub in Ladehors.” 

He was tracing a scar Damen had beneath his shoulder, near his pectoral muscle. It was an ugly, jagged thing. He remembered that fight well. Six against one, he recalled.

“And then this,” Laurent continued, dragging a palm down his abdomen and against his side. His stomach rippled with the feeling of it, Laurent’s touch very warm against him. Laurent’s thumb grazed the white line where a sharp blade had once gone in. Laurent had been the one to apply tight pressure to that one, keeping the blood in.

“And we can’t forget this,” Laurent said, wiggling back on Damen’s legs to make more room for his exploration. He didn’t pick up his hand, simply smoothed it down until it was circling against his thigh, covering the three small lines. His eyes were on Damen’s neck as he did, too low for Damen to catch. They were still huddled close despite the way he’d moved his hips back, close enough that Damen’s breaths were hitting his cheek. 

Damen could feel himself stirring underneath Laurent’s weight. His blood rushed. He wanted to move Laurent off him and press him onto his back, to fuck him with Laurent’s small sounds in his ear. He knew they couldn’t. 

Laurent’s hand crept higher, past his scar and beyond. 

“Laurent,” Damen said, covering his fingers with his hand. His tone was warning.

Laurent didn’t respond. His head was still tipped down, lower than before. He was looking at their entwined hands, the way Damen’s fingers threaded on top of Laurent’s and covered them completely with his own. 

The sudden shift in the mood was jarring. Damen knew Laurent was aware of it, he could feel it in the tensing of his thighs around Damen, suddenly stiff. He wished he could see his eyes.

“Laurent,” Damen repeated, softer.

Laurent’s other hand was atop them, unlike the way it was before when he was mapping Damen’s body like a caress. This touch wasn’t reminiscence, it was reverence. Phantom light, he brushed the little marks that covered Damen’s knuckles, not one of them covered by a trace of ink. Laurent looped a finger around Damen’s, the one that was just the tiniest bit crooked. You couldn’t tell, not quite. Only if you knew it had happened. 

Not all fights could be dealt out with other people, something Damen knew well. Not all things could receive justice. It was something Damen had learned the hard way, years ago, when he’d also learned that sometimes the world wasn’t what you imagined it to be, nor were the people in it. The people who you trusted to keep you safe from it.

Laurent could keep himself safe. Damen knew that, he believed that about him, but that wouldn’t stop Damen from wanting to shield him from everything bad around him, even if that was just abstract things from the past. And when he’d learned that, along with the knowledge that there was no longer anyone to extract his justice from, he’d taken that out instead on the first thing he could find, which happened to be a wall. He’d wanted it to shatter, to break under the force of his fists and crumble around him like everything else he was feeling. Like everything good that was snatched from Laurent. 

Damen didn’t remember much after that. He remembered looking down at his hands, so much blood in his sight that he’d wondered if he managed to make the bricks bleed with him. He remembered Laurent, crouching down in front of him and cleaning his wounds away until the only proof was the pounding in Damen’s entire body. He remembered Laurent, bringing Damen’s bandaged knuckles to his lips.

Laurent made a low sound, like clearing his throat. His expression was vacant when he met Damen’s gaze. His pulse beat fast under Damen’s thumb.

Damen pressed his lips to the beating skin.


	5. Chapter 5

“So,” Damen said. “What have you got?”

He was lying on his bunk, on his back with his legs dangling off the end. It was extremely uncomfortable, but there were only so many new positions he could find when one became tiring. He would have taken the floor, but then he’d probably just utilize it for pushups instead and he knew Nikandros liked to pace when he read letters.

“Not much,” he said, sifting through the mail that had come for them. It had arrived during the lockdown and was only distributed after. Another privilege taken from them. “Some guy Aratos, asking me to add him to my call list. Kolnas. My sister.”

The first two names were anonymous to Damen. Damen knew Nikandros’ sister well, the only person in Nikandros’ family who knew what he’d been involved in and the only person who didn’t think he was working abroad. Nikandros only lied when he thought it was singularly necessary. 

Damen thumbed at his own two letters; already open and checked when they’d been delivered to his cell by Audin. He’d received plenty in the past that had come primarily blocked out, black lines running through half the sentences and censoring whatever it was different men and women had said to him. Sometimes random but just as often not. He knew he’d been all over the news when he’d been incarcerated, it was no secret to anyone that he was in here. 

These weren’t those kinds of letters. There was one from Elon, one of his men on the outside who only corresponded with him in code that the guards couldn’t get to. _A birthday gift for my friend_. A drop-off. _I’ve heard prayer can be helpful in difficult times._ The chapel. A simple trick Kastor had taught him.

The other one was from Jokaste. Not one to mince words, it was short and straightforward. _Damianos_ , she wrote. We should talk. Call soon. J.

Damen was probably going to call sometime that week anyway. He pushed himself up and tossed them onto an open spot on the cabinet, balancing himself with a hand as he swiveled. Sitting up like this, his legs nearly touched the floor.

His arms were locked behind his back in a slow, burning stretch when he heard the sound of rusting wheels turning. Their old state protested the usage, making the new presence more known than the quiet, unobtrusive call of, “commissary.” 

Generally having a habit of taking what he needed when on his own shift, Nikandros didn’t bother glancing up from the letter he was reading again. Damen turned his head to the voice, meeting the hazel eyes of Erasmus. 

It took a few seconds for the name to come back to him. They’d spoken a few times over the weeks, passing conversations that didn’t amount to much, but Damen couldn’t say what circles he was running in or how he was adjusting since they’d first met. Lately, the rest of the prison had been feeling very far away to him.

“Hi,” Erasmus said, looking down when Damen raised a chin in acknowledgment. His cheeks were colored like Damen had done something particularly suggestive, and he tried not to let it show. 

“Hi,” Damen said, jumping down from the bunk. He carried himself as impassively as he could. He didn’t want to make Erasmus more ruffled, but he only flushed harder as Damen neared. He supposed it was something he couldn’t help.

“How are you doing?” Damen asked, wanting to distract Erasmus from his own fidgety state. He heard papers get set down, and turned to see Nikandros staring at them.

Erasmus was toying with the handle of the cart when he faced him again. Damen was confident that he’d heard Damen, but he showed no intention of speaking despite his moving lips. It made Damen want to take the simple question back.

“Do you need anything?” Damen asked with a pointed look to Nikandros, giving Erasmus his time. “They have the chocolate you like.”

Nikandros didn’t like any particular kind of chocolate. As far as Damen knew, he didn’t have much of a taste for candy to begin with. Nikandros gave him a funny look, the skin between his eyebrows wrinkling a little, but after Damen stared at him silently he gave one slow shrug, pushing his hair off his forehead.

“Sure,” he said, just as slow. 

Nikandros came to stand beside Damen, the two of them facing Erasmus at the opening of the cell. He motioned indistinctly to a row of blue wrapped bars, lifting a few fingers.

“Give me two of those,” Nikandros said. He gave Damen a look that said _is that what you wanted?_

Erasmus nodded. He reached for them, slipping them out from the band that held them together despite needing to have Nikandros sign his ID number for his purchase first. 

Damen was standing in between the two of them, separating them like a small barrier. Erasmus had to reach forward to hand the candy to Nikandros, across from Damen. It caused the sleeve of his jumpsuit to ride up.

Damen grabbed at his hand.

Purple, blue, yellow. Lines of red, slotted along his wrists and around the shapes of color that ran up his sleeves, too far Damen to see. Damen’s grip around him had been without thought, and the instinct had caused him to squeeze hard enough that Erasmus gasped.

Damen let go, instead reaching for the bar of the cart and gripping hard, feeling it tremble. His own hands were shaking. Flashes danced behind his eyes.

Damen said, very carefully, “What happened to you.” 

Erasmus had blanched. All the color drained from his face and instead showed in the bruises covering his arms. There was no focus in his eyes; it was obvious from the glaze in them that reminded Damen of seeing his reflection in murky water.

“Erasmus,” Damen said, firmly. He was going to run this cart off the highest beam in the block. “Tell me who did this to you.”

“I,“ 

Erasmus couldn’t seem to manage more than that. His head was turning from side to side, away. He’d tugged at the edge of his sleeve, pulling down farther than the unforgiving fabric could go. It tensed against his upper arm. “I didn’t –“

It was clear that he wasn’t able to tell them what had happened. Damen didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to make him feel safe or take away what was happening. All he saw was the defenselessness, an honorless man hitting someone who couldn’t hit back. He took a breath in, pushed one out. Again. It didn’t help.

Damen turned to Nikandros, who was eyeing Erasmus with a very still, very serious expression. The marks were not a one-time thing; it was obvious to anyone who’d received a few of their own in their time. Whoever had done that to Erasmus had been exposed to him, more than once. 

He asked Nikandros in steady Veretian, “Who is his cellmate?”

Nikandros knew these kinds of things. He was a man who retained facts well, keeping them close for whenever someone required them. He didn’t change the direction of his stare as he said, “Govart.”

The name sent a visible wrack of fear through Erasmus, who let out an indistinct sound from between his pressed lips that may as well have been a scream. His white skin had turned a sickly shade of green that would match the bile that was rising in Damen’s throat, turning his mouth sour. Erasmus opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Damen resisted the urge to touch him, to roll his sleeves up and better inspect the damage. He needed to let this out somehow, but he didn’t want Erasmus to think his reaction was about him. It was like being confined.

This wasn’t new. There was nothing unique about this situation, it happened every day to too many nameless, powerless people, but the statistic did nothing to mollify Damen. He took a step closer, and Erasmus flinched.

“Erasmus,” Damen said, as calmly as he could make himself sound. “This is going to stop.”

“Damen,” Nikandros said.

“I’m f-fine,” Erasmus stammered. He was shaking his head again. He was gripping his wrist. “You can’t -“

“Inmates!”

They all looked up. Audin was standing there, one hand on his hip and the other lifted at his side with an exasperated countenance. 

“This isn’t a social call,” he said, before turning it on to Erasmus. “Are you too stupid to roll a cart around? Keep it moving!”

“S-sir,” Erasmus said, giving his head a jerky nod. He pivoted the cart away from their direction, and then turned to Damen and Nikandros like he felt bad to just turn his back on them.

But there was nothing Damen could do, especially not now, and he had to watch in boiling resentment as Erasmus moved farther away from them and into the cell over, haphazardly placing the abandoned candy bars back into place. 

If Damen focused hard enough, he might still hear the sound of whirling washing machines, running and running. Of silent pleas, drowned out by the press of a hand and the ceaseless, telling rhythm of collision. Of Govart’s back hitting the ground, Damen’s body colliding onto his, Damen’s fist smashing down on his nose. Of guards’ boots squeaking against the floor as they ran in. Of the solitary door slamming in Damen’s face. Of silence. Of failure. Of nothing being accomplished.

Damen didn’t feel the short walk as he crossed through their cell, reaching the opposite wall. He didn’t feel the impact as he kicked at the base of the toilet, or at the cabinet. He wondered if he’d feel it against the base of Govart’s throat.

Nikandros watched it all unfold wordlessly. He’d taken a spot on the center of his bunk, and did nothing to stop Damen as he took it out on every available surface the cell offered, which wasn’t much since they were trapped in a fucking box.

His chest was heaving by the time he was finished. He had hardly exerted himself. 

“Damen,” Nikandros said, the same way he’d said it minutes ago when he’d sensed that Damen was about to overflow. Damen lifted his head, seeing his friend in varying shades of red. “You can’t save everyone.”

The red darkened. He _knew_ that. It wasn’t about that, about _everyone._ It was about those weaker than him, those who wouldn’t save themselves. It was about men like Govart who made themselves feel big by bringing others down. Men who took advantage of the innocent, of the vulnerable. It was the things that would never change, no matter how much he willed it.

It was too much for him then. It was simply too much. It felt like the revelation was crawling through Damen’s body and pounding against every surface for freedom, and he needed to let it out somehow. Something that would take this heavy weight off him.

“Where are you going?” Nikandros said, lifting himself gradually like Damen was going to charge from their cell and pummel his way into Govart’s. He wasn’t entirely convinced that he wouldn’t. “Tier time is over in five minutes.”

His eyes raked over the men walking around the block, falling on Lazar. He was loitering near a close by cell, laughing. Damen pushed his sleeves back. “To deliver a message.”

Laurent knew Damen’s demeanors very well. 

He’d say that he knew them as well as his own. After existing as part of a person for two years and then spending every day after that thinking of them, it would only make sense that you could see in them what others might not. If Damen held himself _this_ way, it probably meant _that_. If Laurent ached, he’d wonder if it was because Damen was too. And so when he walked through the kitchen and into the larger pantry in the back, he only needed to look at Damen to know that something was wrong.

It wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary for Damen to be with Laurent like this. It had been happening for quite some time for something physical. For anything else was new, but not so out of nowhere that it gave Laurent pause. He mainly tried not to ponder the new development so much, because he wasn’t so sure that the reasoning mattered to him. Damen wanted to be around him. It felt dreamlike, to have Damen seek him out to talk or to just _be_. He just wanted to live in it.

He was leaning on a titanium counter when Laurent closed the door behind him, keeping the knob turned so it wouldn’t click noisily. His arms were crossed, facing the door like he’d been waiting there for some time, even as Laurent came to stand in front of him. There was expectance about it, like it was clear that the two of them were there for something despite the ominous air. 

Laurent rested a hip on the counter. “Am I in trouble?”

A second went by. Another. Damen didn’t seem inclined to answer him just yet, or to humor his attempt of feeling out Damen’s mood. Laurent considered his options.

When the edge of Damen’s mouth lifted, it was small enough that it reached his eyes without transforming his entire manner. The beauty of it was simple. Laurent wanted to hide his face in Damen’s neck. 

He turned, pressing the heels of his hands against the counter and lifting himself up. It was obscene that even like this he still wasn’t level with Damen’s eyesight, despite the few inches that now separated Laurent’s feet with the floor. He leaned back on his palms. 

“That was an interesting move, having Lazar tell me to meet you here.”

“Interesting?”

“I thought you didn’t want people to know,” Laurent said. _About us_ , he didn’t say.

Damen frowned. He leaned a hand against the table’s edge. “That’s not for me.” He said it like a question. 

Laurent – didn’t know what that meant. He drummed his fingers against the counter. “Were you staking your claim?”

That had Damen giving him a different look, a more knowing one. It sent a tightness through Laurent’s stomach. He stepped forward.

“I don’t need to,” he said. His voice was very deep.

They kissed slowly. Damen licked into his open mouth, slow enough that Laurent’s head went dizzy with it. His legs came open, welcoming the weight of Damen’s body as he wound an arm around him, crossed behind Damen’s neck. His other hand was in his hair, leading his head down toward his as he tilted his own body back.

It was Damen who pulled away first. It left Laurent just as dazed as the kiss; his wet lips remained parted around a hitched sound of confusion. Damen’s eyes were closed, his eyebrows a little bunched together. His fingers had curled tightly in the front of Laurent’s jumpsuit where he’d moved them to separate from him. It was nothing like the other times where he’d pushed Laurent away in irritation or to prove something between them.

Laurent released him. He placed his hands at his sides and wet his lips again, trying to reign himself back in and refocus the rushing of his blood. He remembered the way Damen had been looking blankly at a wall when he’d walked in. He remembered all those earliest times, years ago, where Damen had been upset about something and sought his comfort in Laurent’s body.

He didn’t want that now. But Laurent also knew that he didn’t know how to begin.

Laurent pulled his leg up to his chest, deliberately relaxed as he stacked his arms onto his knee. Damen watched as he did this, still not saying anything. 

“So,” Laurent tried, tilting his head to the side. “How is Kastor handling being a dad?”

The question wasn’t what Damen had been expecting. He blinked like bringing himself back into the present, and then blinked again. “He’s fine. I guess. I’m not so sure, I mainly talk to Jokaste about Euandros.” 

The answer was relatively meaningless. Laurent wasn’t particularly interested in updates in Kastor, he was interested in seeing if the name arose any anxiety in Damen, the unsettled look that came or emotionally, the way he retreated into himself.

He received none of that. Damen mainly looked confused as to why his brother was being brought up, so Laurent asked, “Did he ever keep contact with Nikandros? I’d been meaning to ask, they got along better towards the end.”

It was a risky time to bring up. It was awkward, and not something any of them were likely eager to hash out at the moment, but that’s all that Damen seemed to feel on the matter. Surprise that Laurent was commenting on it.

“No.” he leaned his back on the counter and faced the same direction as Laurent, as close to sitting on top of it as he could. “Not really.”

Nikandros didn’t stir up any discord. He would have wondered if it was business, but if there was anyone who could illogically defeat all odds or work himself around a challenge, it was Damen. 

It stumped Laurent. He wasn’t sure what else could be so troubling to Damen. Aside for, well, himself. 

And so, he would take a page out of Damen’s book. Straightforward, honest Damen, who always opted to be blunt and who Laurent knew would be forthright if he thought something was upsetting Laurent.

“Damen,” Laurent said. “What’s bothering you?”

Damen let out a rush of air like Laurent’s question had physically released it. He hung his head back, looking up, and kept it there when he said, plainly, “I’m fairly certain an inmate I know is being assaulted by his cellmate.” 

Cold water washed over Laurent. It kept him in place like he’d been frozen. His tongue was thick in his throat, making it a bit more difficult to focus on breathing. He spoke through it, repeating, “fairly certain.”

Again, Damen breathed out through his mouth. “His arms are covered in bruises,” he said to the ceiling. Laurent had expected to get it out of Damen but not this quickly, not this helplessly. “And he looked ready to faint when Govart’s name was said.”

The name hit Laurent like a bad odor. It took over all of his facilities, compromising the clarity of his thoughts. He had the great misfortune of having more than one run-in with Govart, an oafish inmate who was as dangerous as he was distasteful. Laurent knew there would be countless inmates who would be stuck behind bars with men like Govart, and he tried to stop himself from thinking about them all. he couldn’t allow himself to, not when he knew that there was nothing to be done for them all. It simply hurt too much.

But there was this one, and Damen felt tethered to him. It was unclear to Laurent if it was coming from some personal connection or just from Damen’s innate need to save half the world. Ironic, considering how he spent the rest of his time adding destruction to it.

Laurent pressed his fingers to the back of Damen’s shoulder. He felt him tense up under the touch, look down at it, and then look at Laurent.

“Tell me the options,” Laurent said.

It was how it led to Laurent intentionally composed and unmoving in his spot, Damen pacing the narrow room as they spoke. It was also how Laurent learned that as far as options went, he didn’t really have any.

“I would kill him,” Damen said, walking with his arms braced at his sides and his stride unhurried. He spoke calmly, tone measured. He didn’t need to raise his voice or pronounce it in some grandiose way. He stated it like it was just a matter of fact, because to Damen, it was.

“But I can’t,” Damen went on when Laurent didn’t question his hesitancies. There was no point. If killing Govart had been a solution, Damen would have done it on the way here. “The last time I –“ He ran both hands down his face, frustrated. 

“Guion is _always_ there,” Damen said, pacing again. “When something happens with him. I don’t know why. And then I’ll just get thrown back into the hole.“ He turned. Laurent eyes kept moving to keep pace with him. “And then I won’t be able to help him at all. Like last time.”

“Okay.” Laurent made his voice neutral. He would stay level for him. “What else?”

“He’s never done business with me,” Damen said. He stopped to lean on the wall opposite Laurent. “He doesn’t deal with anyone else, from what I hear. As far as I know, he’s keeping his nose clean.”

The laughter that followed that was hollow and scornful. Laurent could see him fighting with himself, behind his eyes.

He focused on maintaining himself as composedly as possible. He hadn’t moved much, hadn’t said much, wanting to give Damen the opportunity to unload everything that he was wading through in his head, even if he didn’t realize it needed to be let out. But Damen was unmoving now, working into his lower lip, and for whatever the reason may have been, he’d come to Laurent about this. It was just as much his concern. 

“It can’t come from him,” Laurent said, rubbing the sides of his mouth with his thumb and pointer finger. It wasn’t just because of what Laurent knew would be Erasmus’ terrified, inability to speak up, which he could gauge from just the few scant interactions they’d had. “It won’t do him any good. His best-case scenario, the guards throw him into segregated housing for what they’ll deem as his protection. He’ll rot there.” 

Damen’s chin moved with the words. It was nothing Damen didn’t know, it was just best to make sure every angle had been observed. 

Laurent rubbed his hands around his bent knee. He remembered a conversation from his first day in the prison, back when he’d been in a cell with what had then been strangers. He’d never asked before, but there didn’t seem to be a better time than now.

“Adrastus and Makon,” Laurent said, and it nearly startled him to see the immediate displeasure in Damen’s eyes. “They’re in charge of cell assignments, are they not?”

Displeasure turned to something else. It was almost the same look he got each time Govart’s name came up. He shook his head once. “Not an option.”

Patiently, “Damen.”

“No,” Damen interrupted him, pushing away from the wall. “I mean that it is actually not an option. They don’t –“ Laurent watched as he grappled with the need to remain collected. “It’s not camp. They don’t just assign you as you please.”

“All right,” Laurent said. “So, a bribe.”

“Unfortunately, they don’t take cash deposits.” He let his head fall back again. “We can ask Iphegin. Or Narsis,” he said. “Or Aimeric.”

Laurent closed his mouth. The frustration of it was a cloak, wrapping around them and bringing them together. He wasn’t one to scream, but he was beginning to see the appeal in the release it offered.

He had always known what it was like for Damen to feel restrained, unable to do anything about the problems going on around him. Laurent knew how to accept defeat; it was probably the only honest thing about him, or at least the most honest. Damen was too stubborn for that, too naively hopeful to admit when you’ve reached the end of the road. Looking at him now, it was like seeing a bird with its wings clipped. 

He wanted to open his arms for him, to feel Damen lean into them in a way that he didn’t with anyone else, the way neither of them did with anyone else. He would kiss his forehead, and smooth away his hair, and keep him there until their heartbeats were so in sync that they couldn’t tell one apart from the other. He wanted that. He could admit that, too.

But that wasn’t what Damen needed from Laurent. He needed his help.

Damen didn’t know when he’d begun hanging around so many Veretians. 

He didn’t even realize it at first. He worked with them on electrical. He sold to them. He occasionally indulged in a game of cards, when he was in the mood to deal with people compensating their lack of skill with underhanded moves. But the notion seemed to really take affect when he looked up from his tray and saw that he was the only Akielon at the table.

He sat across from Jord, who he’d really always liked. Jord sat beside Orlant, who’d never really liked Damen. To his left were Laurent and Rochert, and on his right was Ancel who liked himself enough for everyone. They were, for whatever reason, discussing Ancel’s sexual exploits. Damen had some vague memory of this being mentioned to him before, but he couldn’t say he cared much either way about Ancel’s proclivities.

Also, Laurent had his hand on Damen’s leg under the table and a better part of his focus was on that, rather some guard Ancel had his eye on.

“The point is, you’ve got nothing,” Jord was saying.

“Not _nothing,”_ Rochert said, the last word pitching a little high. Damen just caught the derisive way he rolled his eyes back. “He knows that Berenger likes horses and books about cliffs.” 

“It’s called a long game,” Ancel said, ripping a piece of bread in half. He scowled at it like the plain rye offended him. “Not that I expect any of you to understand that.”

“Understand what?” Orlant had a cheek against his fist. “That you can’t get a guard to fuck you? Look around, half the men here have done it for extra yard time.”

“Trust me, I am _very_ good at what I do,” Ancel said. Whatever that meant. “And if I was just trying to fuck then I would have done that already.”

“What are you trying to do?” Rochert’s voice was mocking.

Ancel’s cheeks colored. They went as bright as his hair, and he hunched over his tray as he stuck his fork into something indistinct. “He’s not –“ he took a bite, grimacing. “Like that. Easy. If I wanted easy, I would pick one of you.”

Damen grabbed Laurent’s hand, halfway up the inside of Damen’s thigh. He felt a muscle twitch and dug his thumb in. 

Jord leaned towards him. “What exactly is it that you do?” 

He sounded more sarcastic than sincere, but it still led them into a long-winded and over flourished story about all the unattainable scores (he was a _senator_ ). The obstacles ( _he_ was married). The successes (and _they_ both paid triple).

This led to another ominous story about a famous artist from Bazal that he once knew, which led Damen into a story of his own experiences with Patran art. It wasn’t like him to share these things, but anything felt suitable than hearing the supposed history of Ancel’s little black book. 

It had been a phase of his, a pastime more than anything, something he and Nikandros would do at eighteen when they’d kept their hands clean for a few weeks and grew restless. Stores were for children. Banks were too boring, too easy to outmaneuver. They moved on to art galleries. 

The art period was like calling out in class in comparison to the rest of Damen’s rap sheet, but he still missed it. They usually scoped the places out beforehand, but sometimes they didn’t, choosing to go in blind. He thought of the lingering shadows, the constant threat of the alarm and the way the stolen visuals would look in their home later, or high up on the market. He thought Laurent would like those nights best. He probably would have triggered an alarm just to make things more difficult, and it would be an entire night of extra running and evading before Damen would realize how much more fun that had made it.

“And you?” Ancel tipped his nose in Orlant’s direction, crossing his arms. “What have _you_ done?” 

Damen knew from enough talk that Orlant was in for manslaughter. He knew that Orlant saw that was what Ancel had meant, but he rubbed a thumb against the stubble on his chin and said, “The infirmary nurse. Twice.”

The conversation rolled onward, and Damen was not above noticing the way his shoulders felt light and uncoiled. He didn’t know if it was the easy conversation, or from the thought of how he was going to take Laurent apart later until he begged for release, just to make up for the way he was circling his fingers against him now, driving him out of his mind. He nudged his ankle into the side of Laurent’s, cautioning, but Laurent only nudged back. It reminded Damen of the tattoo, the marking that he now knew had been there all along. His fingers dug into Laurent’s knee in an entirely different way.

Navigating the week had been a day-by-day process. Damen wasn’t someone who could simply let go of things that were out of his control. He needed to find the solution, and to implement it. It was that straightforward. 

The issue was that there was no solution. There was nothing in his sights, not now, and so Damen busied himself instead with doubling his weights and trying not to break all the useless shit they had him fixing on electrical. At night he counted and recounted his cash, watching the numbers flash in the way they once would on a screen, or on a maroon padded table as the dice rolled in a dimly lit casino in Ver-Vassel. In the days, there was Laurent.

Damen didn’t know how to argue it, or to explain it. He wasn’t interested in it. He was too busy laughing, and fucking, and feeling the same way he did when he was twenty-two and on top of the world, at the side of the only other person he would share it with. 

He looked at Laurent, now, helpless to the way his heart swelled at the sight of him. Being with him could be so hard. He was like a dagger that tilted Damen’s chin up for a kiss. It was painful, and dangerous. 

But then he looked at Damen, and Damen didn’t care, because it could also be so easy.

Damen was staring at the ceiling when it began.

He was in his cell, once again, because that was what life was like when you were imprisoned. While there were things to do to distract yourself or try to remain kindled, it all always amounted to a large variation of nothing. Some days he tried to fight it, like he could will away a mind numbing circumstance with attempts of staying stimulated. Others, like today, he lay on his back, thought of the roaring world and just took it.

He didn’t know who made the announcement. Guards’ voices tended to blend together when you didn’t care for them to begin with, all morphing into the same command of indifference. And so while Damen could make a guess, primed from countless experiences of being commanded like an animal, he wasn’t entirely sure who it was who stood in the center, voice echoing off the walls with bravado as he yelled, “Sweep time, ladies!”

Damen experienced this news of a sweep the same way he did every other one, with the leveled head of security. Most of his contraband was hidden scarcely around different places, ones that contained no traces back to him. 

It was still impossible to ignore the frantic energy of the block whenever those words were called out. It was like tapping a vein. A wave of panic rushed through all of them, causing men to scramble and a rush of anarchy to shake the bars in anticipation.

“Stand your gates!” one guard called out, another one coming in behind him and adding, “Inmates! Move!”

Men went down the hole because of sweeps. Men got time added, depending on just how bad the offense was. They all knew that, and they didn’t bother to cover up their hysteric attempts to salvage themselves despite the way the guards were filling in by the second. There was no point. If you could hide it in time, you were fine. If not, all the calm silence in the world wouldn’t make an ounce of a difference.

There was no order to the sweeps, no one by one ticking of each individual row. Guards came at them however they pleased, using the opportunity to exert their dominance over men who most likely terrified them, under any other circumstance. Down on the ground floor, Damen saw as a brown haired inmate had his cabinet drawers pulled out, turned over and emptied all over the floor. He then proceeded to toss it across the block, skidding far enough across the floor that it reached the line of a different cell.

“ _That’s a shot!_ ”

Three cells down from Damen, Pallas and Aktis stood side by side in soldier-learned strength as Berenger caused enough upheaval in their cell that Damen could hear the rummaging. He looked with just his eyes, seeing Pallas remain resolute as his discarded belongings began to collect at their feet, mingling in with the tossed cells around them.

“Cigarettes?” Audin said, on a beam above them and directly across. He had to speak above the noise of bunks being shoved against opposite walls, inmates arguing back that it’s not theirs, it’s not right, _it’s just a fucking joint._ “Don’t you know how bad these are for you?” he went on, slipping them into his back pocket and shoving the inmate into his cell by the back of the head.

Down on the ground floor and to the right, Chelaut walked between Torgier and Guerin with a quick and determined stride. He started with the cabinet, running a hand along the top and the interior shelves, swiping everything off until the surface was entirely cleared. He dropped a jumpsuit off a hook, and overturned boots like he expected a shotgun to fall out and straight into his waiting hands. He then turned his attention to the bunks, stripping the sheets off the mattresses and sliding a hand underneath, bending down and doing the same to the bottom.

Damen watched as things he’d brought in got thrown here and there, and he felt no pity for the men who could bend over backwards to acquire contraband but couldn’t be bothered to find a good enough hiding spot for them. Cell phones. Lighters. Tattoo needles. Damen watched it pile up, and all it made him feel was a growing spark of anticipation at all the new business this was going to bring him.

“ _Clear!_ ”

The block only grew louder as the sweep went on. Each found out inmate seemed to only raise the momentum, like the ones who were hiding something only then knew what they had coming. They began to argue back, at one point two guards needing to make a search while a third one kept the inmate confined against the wall with his arms pinned at his sides. He argued throughout the whole thing, and didn’t hesitate to spit in the guard’s face when an entire bag of heroine was pulled out of the folds of his jumpsuit.

“God _damn,”_ Makon said as he ascended the wide steps. He held multiple little baggies in his hand, dangling between his carefully pinched fingertips. “It’s like Christmas in here.”

It was around then that Radel bustled towards their cell, all business and no pleasantries. Radel never liked Damen or Nikandros much, eyeing them with a certain level of trepidation that never made much sense, as if they were two cons in a block full of straight arrows. Damen smiled as he entered, leaning his head back against the wall and tilting it to the side.

“Make yourself at home,” he said.

Radel didn’t respond. He would, normally, always at the ready with comments about how this wasn’t Damen’s prison (it was), and how he needed to learn who he answered to (himself). He snapped his gloves against his wrist in the same way someone cracked their knuckles in preparation, a runner stretching before a race. Damen lolled his head to the other side, watching the mayhem that played out around him. 

Rare known fact about prison cell toilets: they could be removed from the wall, and then it was just a matter of crouching down to reveal the hole that opened out to open space, pipelines and in some cases, potential escape routes. All you needed to unhinge it was a screw that could be found in the wooden bleachers in the yard, there for the taking. Unless Radel had a copy of the prison blueprints on him and was in the mood to start excavating, he figured his and Nikandros’ secrets were safe.

It had been Kastor’s suggestion, a contribution when Damen had first been incarcerated. One of those _I know a guy_ situations. Damen didn’t ask, he didn’t care. It was enough to him that his brother was looking out for him in his own way.

Damen’s eyes were on Guion. Across the level and standing in front of the inmate who’s cell he’d just ransacked, holding something up to his face that was at the wrong angle for Damen to see. Damen didn’t like his demeanor. He didn’t like the way he was taking pleasure in the moment, like times like these were the reason he took this low pay job. He rubbed his thumbs against his fingertips, watching Guion grin, watching him walk right past Govart’s cell. 

Damen felt it like a blow. He hadn’t seen Govart in days. He’d been avoiding him, not trusting himself to not find him during a free block and wrap his fingers around his neck until his eyes leaked down his cheeks. He saw him now, eyes bright with misplaced cockiness as Guion said, robotically, “clear.”

Something familiar boiled inside in Damen’s body. It changed the way he saw the entire block for a moment. He thought he could rip the bars off from his bunk, heft them into his hand and throw it across the room so it soared into Govart and Guion’s chests and pinned them to the wall. He would –

“Back in line, inmate!” Radel said, stepping around and in front of Damen, getting too close to his face. Damen took a step back, and then another, not realizing until then that he’d been moving at all. 

“You’re clear.” Radel said it once Damen’s back was rigid against the wall, like it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do.

Damen resisted the urge to drag a hand down his face. He threw it out instead, motioning to where they stood. “He didn’t even check his fucking cell!”

Radel’s eyes narrowed. Damen didn’t want to look to that direction, knowing that seeing shaky Erasmus again would snap something irreparable. He wouldn’t be responsible for what he would do then.

But Radel still turned, rotating with his entire body, and it was how he saw Makedon standing at the foot of Govart and Erasmus’ cell.

Damen squinted. He just caught Radel giving him a foul glare, like Damen was an idiot. He followed it with some comment that Damen didn’t hear, his focus on the way Govart and Makedon were standing toe to toe.

“I said I’m cleared.” Damen read Govart’s lips, who was crossing his arms against his stomach like he could block Makedon form entering with his mass alone. He held himself like a guard. He looked like he was waiting for CO Makedon to get out of his way so he could go have a drink with the warden.

But Makedon stepped closer, a hand on his holster and his chin raised. “Are you telling us how to do our job?” Makedon said. “Inmate?” 

A mattress was tossed out in Damen’s line of sight. It was ripped down the middle, screwdrivers rolling out before a young guard bent and collected them, not too far off from where Govart was standing. He towered over Makedon, all bluster and heavy weight. Makedon looked like he could squish him between his fingers.

“Step,” Makedon said, “Back.”

Erasmus was flattened into the wall on Makedon’s other side, taking up his right. His curling hair fell down his forehead and blocked his eyes, though Damen didn’t need to be there to know that they were trained on the floor, unmoving from his neatly laced boots. Govart’s entire manner was creased with hatred, and surrounded by an air that bled of indignation. His lank hair was in his face.

And then he laughed. A short sound, low enough that Damen couldn’t quite make it out, but it reminded Damen of the way men acted during the kitchen card games, minutes before they flipped over a winning hand. He stepped aside, close to Erasmus, his lips curling up as he raised an inviting hand.

Damen felt like there was a balloon in his throat, inflating and inflating. He watched Makedon push past him and into his cell, knowing it was all for naught. He was going to emerge minutes later to Govart’s smug face and Erasmus’ petrified one, and Damen was going to watch it all happen. He saw a sheet falling against the old rusting bars, crisp and white like a beacon against hundreds of rows of cells. He saw it every night, every time Erasmus walked around the prison with his sleeves pulled tight against his wrist. He saw Aimeric, dangling from a beam with a sheet around his neck. He saw a bloodied wall, his own bruised knuckles trembling in his lap.

“What the _fuck_.”

The words washed into Damen’s ears like they’d been said just for him, the entire block silencing for it, but of course that wasn’t true. It was Govart, loud enough that he’d drowned everything else out, erratic enough that he was no longer in line.

“Back on your number, inmate.” Makedon looked imperturbable, all things considered. He didn’t seem unnerved by the fact of an inmate stepping into his cell in the middle of a sweep, disregarding orders and standing with his fists clenched. Maybe it was the confidence that he could take Govart down. Maybe it was because he was preoccupied with his hands full of contraband.

“Those aren’t _mine_.” Govart was motioning to the bag of hand rolled cigarettes. The screwdriver held between his latex covered fingers, brown and red crusting around the tip. Damen’s heart began to make its way up his throat, watching as Makedon fisted a handful of white powered filled baggies. Govart saw it too, barking out another laugh. ”You can’t be serious.”

“Damen –“ Nikandros, still standing beside him on the wall.

Makedon, who was crouched on the ground in front of the lower bunk, pushed himself up from his knees and advanced on Govart himself. Govart didn’t budge an inch as he said, emphatically, “None of that shit is mine.”

“I’m not even done,” Makedon said, dropping everything down onto the cabinet and tugging his gloves on tighter. “And I don’t need an inmate to tell me what’s right in front of me. Now _get back in your place_.”

They were both yelling, loud enough that surely Damen wasn’t the only one who could hear them, but he was the only one who seemed to be listening. There were other disruptions, other inmates arguing their fate and lashing out as hands gripped at their arms and pulled them out of their cells, but all Damen could see was the rigid line of Govart’s back and the way his nostrils flared. He shook his fists at his sides. 

“I’ve already been cleared by Guion.” His fingers were curling, they were raised, and Damen could look nowhere else. “And you have no proof – I didn’t _have anything_ –“

“Are you saying I’m stupid?” Makedon didn’t call for backup, he didn’t do anything but match Govart’s acerbic look. “That I can’t do my job? These are already a hundred series shots and a trip to solitary, do you want to make it worse by inciting a guard?”

Govart’s fist slammed into the wall. It didn’t seem to hurt, only to rev him up further. He stepped away and out onto the beams like he was waiting for someone to come down and pull him out of this.

And then he saw Erasmus.

“Was it you?” His shouting had taken on an even nastier quality, Erasmus flinched and hunched over like it was coiling around him with two hands, squeezing until he withered. “Did you do this?”

“ _Step off –_ “

Damen couldn’t hear what Erasmus responded, he could hardly hear him when they were face to face, but it came with a shake to his head and a further curling of his body, beet red and trembling.

“ _I’ll fucking kill you –_ “

Makedon’s hands were at Govart’s back, gripping him by the jumpsuit and wrenching him off of Erasmus where he’d plastered him to the wall, holding him there with his weight. Govart whirled around, his face just as red as the discarded blood stained shiv, and drove his fist right into Makedon’s face.

“ _Damen_.” Nikandros’ voice was urgent beside him, struggling to be heard over the pounding footsteps of the two other guards who were rushing to their cell and throwing themselves at Govart. “Damen, what did you -?”

“I didn’t.” He wasn’t able to finish the sentence, unable to focus on anything but Govart lashing out, throwing another punch, hitting another guard against the jaw. “I didn’t even - I’d only told –“

Damen stopped again, this time looking between Nikandros’ wild eyes and Govart, wrists now cuffed behind his back as he was pushed down the line in a jumble of swears and spitting. Damen felt it again, that balloon on his chest, slowly and disarmingly losing air.

Around them, the sweep continued.

When Laurent had been a teenager, he’d read an article on phantom limbs. 

It was a sensation where a person who’d had a limb amputated felt as if that limb was still there. It occurred with most people, and it often came with pain. It was generally in the mind, the brain no longer knowing how to interpret signals from those nerves, but it was there all the same. That ever-present sense where that vital part of you was still intact, despite all the times you reminded yourself that it was gone. That ache, a burning sting from something that was no longer there, yet it still brought you pain. 

That was what it had felt like when Laurent lost Damen. 

It was insurmountable. Laurent kept thinking that he would get used to it, that he would wake up one day and not feel that renewed sense of loss each time the other side of the mattress was empty. Eventually, he would stop picking up the phone before remembering there was no one to call. Sooner or later, he would stop looking for Damen’s eyes in a crowd. 

It never went away. The longer they were apart the more it throbbed within him, like the invisible thread that connected them was getting stretched tighter, trying to snap them back together. Laurent didn’t know how to cut it loose. He didn’t know how to stop hearing Damen’s laugh, how to stop feeling his hands every time Laurent closed his eyes and touched his own body. He wondered, every day, if Damen also felt like a part of him had been removed. Laurent might never know.

And that was okay, because he knew what Damen felt now. Here, in this room that was small enough that they could feel each other breathe, with Damen kissing him like he’d been waiting three long years for it.

Damen had undressed him first. He hadn’t kissed his lips, hadn’t gone anywhere near his face. He’d brought his hands straight to Laurent’s throat, working at the buttons that held his clothing together, and Laurent had embraced the cold and the way he longed to pull Damen in as he pushed it down his body, falling away and pooling at his feet.

He’d raised his hands as Damen pulled his shirt up and off, letting it disturb his hair and slide off his arms. It was like he was a boy, requiring assistance to undress, but the way Damen looked at him didn’t make him feel like anything but a man. He brushed a large hand against Laurent’s ribcage, letting his eyes roam with hungry ownership, like something hard earned was finally in his possession. Laurent groaned, not knowing if it was from the way Damen rubbed a thumb against the bud of his nipple or if it was the way he’d watched as he did it, lips a little parted. It was at that point that he cupped Laurent’s face in his hands.

Laurent couldn’t stop himself from reacting to it like an innocent. It was like being kissed for the first time, experiencing that first swoop beneath your feet and that first swell of hot desire in your stomach. He scraped his fingers down the back of Damen’s neck, vibrating over the place where he was inked into Damen’s skin forever. He pulled Damen against him tighter, hearing the sounds he made between each slide of their mouths.

Damen pulled away first, too soon, but it was only to press back to the side of Laurent’s face. The line of his jaw, beneath it. His mouth was open against his neck. It made Laurent feel lit through with electricity. 

Damen kissed him again, tilting his chin up and sucking his lip between his own. He then lowered himself to his knees.

Laurent felt as the air left his chest in a rush, deflating him. He closed his eyes, trying not to shake. Damen had a palm against him, rubbing the heel of his hand against the tight fabric of his underwear, drawing a desperate moan from Laurent’s throat. It felt good to let out.

Laurent stopped him with his hand, gripping his wrist. He felt the muscles of Damen’s bicep flex as he made a small sound of dispute, looking up at him through dark lashes. Laurent tried his hardest to give him a look of reprimanding despite the slit of his eyes. 

“Don’t,” Laurent pushed out the word. His head was spinning from the way Damen looked in front of him, kneeling and eager. He would make it so good, and he would enjoy it so much. They both would. Laurent whimpered, wanting it. He wanted Damen in every way.

But, not now. They would have other times for that, for Laurent to return the favor with an enthusiasm that shocked him every time. Now, he wanted – He tugged on Damen again, needing to have him close, and when Damen didn’t move he just brought himself down with him.

It seemed to surprise Damen, and take him off guard enough that it stunned a laugh out of him, short and hearty as he gripped Laurent’s arms and allowed himself to be pushed against the floor. Laurent kissed the smile off his lips, sucked the feeling of it rumbling against Damen’s throat. He placed his palms flat on the ground on either side of his head, holding himself up enough that he hovered. Their noses brushed.

Damen smiled again. They were close enough that he could feel it before seeing it. It was small and crooked. He seemed so young, sprawled on his back and guilelessly turned on. He looked so happy; Laurent thought it would ruin him.

“Do you not want a blowjob?” Crass, like he was a teenager. His grin tugged even more playfully at his lips as he ran the edge of his finger down the side of Laurent’s face. “Or did you want it like this?”

Laurent turned his face into Damen’s touch, pressing his lips to his wrist. He knew it wouldn’t stop Damen from seeing the color bloom against the back of his cheeks. 

“I don’t want that,” he said, kissing his knuckles. He let his hips settle down, letting Damen feel how hard he was. Damen was just as aroused for him, rigid between his thighs. The proof of it changed the shape of Damen’s mouth, rubbing his hips up and into Laurent’s. Laurent made a sound, louder when Damen did it again. In that moment, he felt young too.

“I don’t have,” Damen said, after a short interval of kissing, of the two of them nipping at each other’s lips and soothing it with more kisses. He said it against Laurent’s cheek, tilting his head, not fighting Laurent when he pulled away. “I didn’t – that’s why I want.” He looked at Laurent with purpose, in a way only he could. When he spoke, he did so with weighted lashes. “Let me use my mouth on you.” 

“Next time,” Laurent said, mainly to see how Damen reacted to a next time. He’d said it with more confidence than he’d ever thought he would have again, and it was received with more fervor than he deserved. 

“Did you just plan on kissing me?” Damen asked, lifting his eyebrow. He seemed entirely unbothered by the fact that he was lying down on the ground, Laurent straddling his hips without showing any sign of moving. “I’m much more experienced than that, you know.”

“I know,” Laurent said. “Everyone knows.”

He grinned again. He was so pleased; it hurt Laurent’s heart to experience it.

“What does that mean?”

“Shut up,” Laurent said, before lowering his head again.

He ended up undressing Damen the same way he had Laurent. It was made a bit more difficult with the new positions, but Damen lifted his hips and adjusted his arms, and not before long he was shirtless for Laurent, there for him to recall each inch of skin to his memory. 

He took his time.

When Laurent eventually brought his fingers to Damen’s mouth, he wasn’t sure if it was instinct or sheer desperation for _something_ that had him parting his lips, wetting them for him. He took Damen’s hand, doing the same, holding his eyes and hearing one of their hearts thudding.

It was silent, the way it had been when they’d first gone in, letting their touches speak for themselves. Neither of them spoke. Their breaths didn’t rise past a steady synchrony and the occasional gasp, another sigh. Damen stroked him slowly, the way Laurent liked, and still it was hard for him to focus on his own pleasure when he could see the way Damen melted under his own attention, arching back his neck and groaning Laurent’s name.

Laurent finished first. It was with a hitched sound, his fingers curling into the taut skin of Damen’s shoulder blade, hunching over him with little aftershock thrusts. Damen seemed enraptured by it, murmuring silent praises like he’d never seen Laurent like this, expression slackened with release. His head was bent. He was breathing hard.

It wasn’t long after that before Damen curled his fingers into the back of Laurent’s hair and pulled him down all the way, pressing his face into the juncture between his neck and shoulder. He half breathed him in and half exhaled a rough sound, getting Laurent’s skin hot and damp with it. Already wrung out from his own orgasm, it didn’t take much else for Laurent to collapse on top of him.

Damen’s arms circled around him. He was warm, and radiating with it as he swept Laurent’s hair off his face, kissing the revealed skin.

This time, it was Laurent who smiled.

“Sorry it took me so long to call,” Damen said.

It had been longer than he’d initially expected. The most recent sweep had significantly wiped the prison out, and running a market straight from a jail cell was busy work. He’d had a few people to meet with, and more than a few inmates to negotiate with. The only time inmates could use the phones were during a free block which Damen rarely spared, and Jokaste had a strict policy on not receiving calls from his contraband cellphone. It was a needless rule, in Damen’s opinion. As if he would ever allow himself to be caught, or for anything bad to happen to his family. But she and his brother seemed committed to living a riskless suburban life, so it was also a needless argument.

“Time just got away from me,” Damen went on, when the other line was silent. He tapped his hand against the wall he was propped against. The painted over cement dulled the sound. “It’s been busy. You know.”

“Of course,” Jokaste said. It was difficult to tell if she was mocking him or not.

Damen waited for her to go on, or to say anything actually substantial. She’d answered the phone calmly, and responded with the typical greetings that someone would use with an anonymous debt collector. Damen had needed to remind himself that she was the one who’d requested a conversation. 

He drummed his fingers mutely. “Are you home?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“I put Euandros down for a nap around an hour ago,” she said. “We were visiting your brother at the office, he took us out for an early lunch. Sushi.”

His brows pinched. “Can he eat that?”

“There was a children’s menu,” Jokaste said, in that same tone she used for nearly every kind of conversations. “Plenty of the men at Kastor’s firm have children. Really, Damen.”

“Right.” Damen rubbed a hand against his face, speaking into the skin of his palm. Sometimes it was impossible to tell what Jokaste wanted. 

“So, the holidays,” he tried. That was neutral enough. “Thanksgiving is in a few weeks. Are you visiting family in Aegina?”

The thing with him and Jokaste was that they’d never done much talking before he was sent away. They spoke, of course, and had always gotten along well enough, but it had always been because she was where Kastor was, and that was often in the same circle as Damen. It still felt like that, in a way. Talking because they should. Tethered by circumstance, rather anything much deeper than mutual interests. 

He liked Jokaste. He did. Above all else, she was the mother of his nephew and someone who pulled his brother out of himself. It was just – she was such an eerie mix of direct and backhanded, it hurt Damen’s head to think about. It would almost remind him of Laurent, except that at least Laurent’s calculated quality was usually to a purpose. Damen got the impression that Jokaste just liked to fuck with people’s heads.

And so he listened to a story about some cousin Kastor hadn’t met yet, and some weeklong retreat they were going to go on that he knew Kastor was going to absolutely hate. He nodded at the right times, and asked her the right questions, and asked himself what they were doing.

Somewhere throughout the story, Damen heard the telltale sound of a cork coming off. It came in a _pop_ , a glass hitting a countertop, a customary break in conversation. 

“Are you drinking?” He could practically picture her lifting a glass to her lips, coiling a ringed finger through her hair as she sipped her Chateau d'Yquem. Top shelf only for her, probably one of the few things they actually had in common. “It’s the middle of the day.”

“And you’re in prison,” she replied. “Cheers.”

Damen didn’t know what she would mean by that, or if it was supposed to mean anything beyond some power dynamic. The free block wasn’t going to last forever. There were people waiting in line behind him for the phones, and while Damen didn’t plan on hanging up for any reason other than being finished talking, he still didn’t need restless men breathing down his neck.

He changed his grip on the receiver. “So,” he said, feeling good about their allotted small talk. “You wrote. Is everything alright?”

“You always ask that,” she said. Her voice echoed like she was speaking into a wineglass. It could have been the poor reception. “Like you can do something for us, like the worst news would change anything.”

The inmate beside him hung up, slamming the phone against the wall and then remaining there, lingering with his hand. Damen stared at the receiver, blinking. When he spoke again, he could hear how incredulous he sounded. “Of course I would do something,” he said. “What are you talking about?”

“From behind bars?” He resented not being able to see her face, the disadvantage of being unable to interpret her features. “That would be difficult.”

With people like Jokaste, a simple conversation could be like going up a rollercoaster. You were constantly in that moment of suspense, waiting for the drop to come.

“Jokaste.” He didn’t have the energy for games. Not with her, where it was all convolution and no thrill. “You wanted to talk.”

“Yes.” Her voice was clear again. Just like that, the strange prelude felt imagined. “About your case.”

Sometimes, an anticipated drop was a part of the ride.

“My…“ it was, undoubtedly, the last thing he expected for her to say. Damen had pled guilty at his court hearing, both by his lawyer’s advisement and by the fact that he wasn’t an idiot. He had the best lawyer money could buy, but facts were facts. Damen was guilty on all counts, and there had been a damning amount of evidence to prove that, building against him for years prior to his detainment. Pleading not guilty would have done nothing for him, and there was only so much reality even the greatest lawyer could twist. “You want to talk about my charges?”

“Oh, no,” Jokaste said. “No. That’s not what I meant.”

Sometimes, you couldn’t see the drop coming.

Jokaste said, “It was Kastor.”

She said it like that was the end of a sentence. He shook his head slowly. “Kastor…?”

It wasn’t what he’d been expecting her to say, either. _We should talk_ , she’d written. _it was Kastor._ He shook his head at a gray wall again. He didn’t…

Damen didn’t know how she would have gone about this if it were in visitation, if he could see her pristine elegance and her dethatched empathy. If seeing Damen in here, like this, would change her manner in deliverance. If she would use that same cool, crystal tone as she said, candidly, “Kastor was the one who named you.”

It was just words, at first. A string of different words that were grouped together, formed into a sentence that Damen knew meant something. She wouldn’t have said them if they hadn’t. They bounced around in his head, swirling and flashing behind his eyes. He replayed them, his lips moving around each syllable in an effort to make more sense of them. Kastor. Kastor was –

“Damen.”

_Kastor was the one who named you._ That was what she’d said. He tried to set them in a straight line in his mind, and found that he couldn’t. It was like they were shaking, refusing to form together. Shaking like his hand, which he’d placed against the wall before him. He was leaning his body against it. _Kastor was -_

“Damen.”

It had sounded like hearing his name from underwater, Jokaste’s voice rushing back to him at once. It felt like finally hitting the surface, like any moment he would gasp in a lungful of air.

“Damen,” Jokaste said a third time. “You’re still on –“

“What are you saying to me?” Damen said.

He said it directly into the mouthpiece. He had to force himself to loosen his fingers.

“I was quite clear the first time,” Jokaste told him. Her refined voice had never been so grating. He wanted to shove his hand into the receiver and pull her out from the other end, so he could see her placid face and demand more than monosyllabic sentences. 

“Jokaste.” He spoke very, very calmly. He didn’t know where this sudden bout of antagonism was directed. Jokaste. His brother. Himself. 

_His brother._

Her response came shaped around a sigh. “There’s not much else to say.” Her voice had lowered a pinch, like she was the one surrounded by inmates who had no business hearing her private conversation. “Beyond that. The FBI was onto you both, and they approached Kastor first.”

His eyes were closed.

“He was careful,” she said. Once she got started it was like she couldn’t stop, or she didn’t want to. “He kept his name off things that mattered, letting you have the reins.” Damen remembered that. He remembered how much he’d appreciated it, Kastor letting his younger brother prove himself. 

“They’d always wanted you most.” He waited five heartbeats for her to continue. “It wasn’t the hardest thing in the world to propose a deal.”

“Why?” He asked himself.

He was happy his brother wasn’t there to hear the way the word slipped out. He’d practically felt it fall out of a place he kept locked tight.

“Because he was going to be a father,” Jokaste said. It was the first time her voice really raised, though it was still far from a shout. She would never beak composure like that. “And he needed to think about our son.”

“And, well,” Damen’s stomach ached with cramp. His nails dug crescent lines into his palm. “I think he knew you would go down for him, anyway.”

Damen knew that in her own way, the words were meant to be a means of comfort. Meant to soothe and reassure, to pad a wound that was gaping open with no warning. But her tone was wiped of inflection, like a simple delivering of facts. It made him wonder about the kind of mother she would be to his brother’s child.

Kastor had been at his official hearing, sat in the back in a dark suit. He’d visited Damen during his first week here, waiting for him with the phone already in hand. He’d told Damen he looked terrible in orange, and that he was going to have to fight. 

“For what it’s worth,” Jokaste said to him. “He refuses to speak about you. He only says your name to Euandros.”

Damen knew, on some level, that it cost her a fraction of her pride to admit that to him. It changed nothing.

_You’d always know,_ he wanted to say. _This entire time, all these years of phone calls and letters. You knew._

Time was running out. He tried to speak. Failed. He tried again, wetting his lips and pushing on, past the lump in his throat that felt like a clenching fist. His forehead was pressed to the wall. “Why are you telling me this now?”

She didn’t hesitate to answer him. “Because I know you won’t hold it against him.”

It wasn’t a complete answer. But it was the truth, which was why Damen wasn’t expecting it when she added, “and because I know he’s in there with you,” she said, with the same lack of hesitation. “And I know you’ve already forgiven him for something he didn’t do.”

And whether you knew the drop was coming or not, you still plummeted all the same.


	6. Chapter 6

_“He’s never going to forgive me.”_

_Laurent said it with his back to the door. It was unwise. He knew from experience to always have his eye on an exit. The direct sight of everyone who would enter and exit was pivotal for him, especially now._

_It didn’t matter. He would sit, as he was, and look at nowhere but his brother._

_Auguste looked back at him. He always did, his bright blue eyes always solely on Laurent without so much as a blink. Not because he didn’t want to turn away, but because he couldn’t._

_“He’ll believe in me at first,” Laurent said. The words tasted bitter in his mouth. They were coated in an anger he had directed at himself and at Damen for having faith in Laurent when he didn’t have it in himself. He was happy to get the statement out of him._

_“He’ll fight for me,” Laurent continued, wanted to kick and scream. He wanted to get in the ring like Damen used to and fight someone. Himself, maybe. “He won’t listen to reason. But then, eventually,” Laurent’s head was in his hands. “He’ll think I betrayed him.”_

_But really, didn’t he? Laurent might have not given the FBI what they wanted. He might have played dumb for them, and refused to give them anything on Damen. A name, a location, a hint of acknowledgment. Laurent would sooner give himself over at gunpoint._

_But he’d still run. Damen was in trouble, finally on their radar. His time had to be limited. And while Laurent believed in him, and in his ability to stay safe - no matter what that meant - it didn’t change the fact that he was going to need Laurent, and that Laurent was going to be gone._

_“I know what you’re thinking,” Laurent said to Auguste, who he knew was probably not thinking anything at all. “That I’m a fool. That I’ll regret this decision. That it’s not too late.”_

_But it_ was _too late. Laurent had known the instant he’d kissed Damen’s sleep warmed forehead and slid out from his bed that it was over. There could be no turning back. This fear, this consuming terror of Damen waking up one day and learning new parts of Laurent that he tried to hide, or of finally realizing that he wasn’t good enough for him and that he deserved worlds better. It was going to make Laurent sick. He couldn’t keep carrying this weight on his shoulders, this panic that was so thick and present that it was like a second skin._

_The lightness Damen brought him wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to change Laurent, to make him someone who could be worthy of a man like Damen. He couldn’t go on like this, and so he had to simply go._

_Laurent held his brother’s hand in his, linking their fingers together. He wondered if in his state, Auguste was able to feel his tremors._

_“I’m scared,” Laurent whispered. It was something he could only ever admit to his brother, and yet he still couldn’t say the words aloud, proudly and carelessly. It was like every demon he’d ever faced would resurface from it._

_He was scared for himself. Evading the FBI was much more difficult than franchises made it seem, and it was significantly more difficult to make these kind of moves when he didn’t have a warm, familiar voice in his ear. He had no plans, no strategies, only one solid, unyielding fact: he had to disappear._

_He was scared for Damen. He knew Damen would scoff or say that he didn’t feel fear, and so Laurent would feel it enough for the both of them. Damen was going to be alone, and a target, in a way he’d never been before. And on top of that, he was going to have to brace it with the small, unignorable thought that it was the love of his life that put him there._

_He was scared for Auguste. For the person who Laurent knew would have died for him, and instead was going to have to die alone._

_The call had come a week ago, to the old fashioned flip phone with the number that he’d only given out to one place. The hospital ID had flashed across the screen, lighting up in the dark bedroom where Laurent had been lying for hours, staring at the wall and listening to Damen snore in his ear._

_Not much we can do,_ they’d said. _A few weeks at best… We’re sorry… Say goodbye… A good time…._

_To think that this would be Laurent’s last time with his brother was very simply too much to think about, and so he wouldn’t. It wasn’t like him to suppress these things, to ignore his pain in favor of feeling it. But it was the same thing with Damen. Laurent couldn’t afford to crumble, or to allow his emotions to drive him into an irreversible blunder. If he stopped and thought about the fact that he was about to lose his last remaining family member, or the fact that he was never going to see Damen again, sweet, agonizing Damen who would soon hate Laurent as much as Laurent loved him, then he was going to fall apart._

_“You know,’ Laurent wiped at his eye. He held Auguste tighter. “It doesn’t matter that you never got to know me as an adult. I think I’d rather you remember me as the annoying, idolizing kid who thought you hung the moon.”_

_Laurent closed his eyes, and lowered his head to the bed, and let himself feel the warm press of his brother’s shoulder one last time. Visiting hours would be ending soon, and Laurent needed to be gone and far from here long before a nurse came back. He’d walked in with brown eyes and a hat, he’d leave through the back with green eyes and a low hood. He’d ditch them both when he was at least twenty minutes away._

_He leaned forward, and pressed his forehead to Auguste’s neck._

_“I’m sorry,” Laurent said in soft, quiet Veretian. “I’ll miss you. I love you.”_

_And then he disappeared._

Another thing about prison: you couldn’t just go where you pleased. 

When it was time for the showers, you either went or stayed dirty in your cell. You reported to work or you got a shot. When a meal was being served, you sat in front of a tray and only left when you were finished. Yard time wasn’t optional. And when it was time to grow roots in your cell, that was where you were.

And so when the only free block of the day ended, Damen had to hang up the phone, sit in his cell and come to terms with the fact that Laurent had never betrayed him. 

He felt like – Damen didn’t know how he felt. He didn’t know a single fucking thing, other than the fact that he’d spent three years thinking the person he would have given up his entire life for had been intent on ruining his own.

Three years was a generous number. Damen had to take into account the months before, the endless months where he’d fought it. All logic, all the signs and hints and realities that had pointed him to the fact that Laurent had given Damen up to the authorities. The way he’d just – up and disappeared from Damen’s life. The empty apartment, wiped of all his belongings. The way Nikandros, or any of his other men couldn’t find him anywhere in the world, as if he’d never even existed. The awful, painstaking timing of it all.

All of that had been thrust into Damen’s face. Again, and again. And eventually he’d given in; he’d forced himself to accept the undeniable actuality of what Laurent had done. But until then, until that helpless point, there had been hope. 

Hope in Laurent. In the man that he was. Good, and true. The heart that he tried to hide, and the way he might lie and cheat and connive the rest of the world, but not Damen. With Damen he was different. They both were.

And all along, he’d been _right_.

Laurent hadn’t sold him out. He hadn’t given him up, or given him away like something cast-off, something he’d never really cared about. All along, all those nights in solitary and fights he’d had and horrors he’d endured or watched unfold just out of his reach, it wasn’t because of Laurent. It was because of –

His brother.

Damen didn’t know how to process it. It was as if this kind of understanding was purely not in his realm of capability. He had no idea how to fathom this sort of thing, he didn’t know where to even begin, and so he just – wouldn’t. It would come, a time where he would have to swallow whatever this was and face Kastor, his new understanding of Kastor, and what it meant that Damen knew, honestly, that he would have still taken this fall for him, had he known. 

He would, just not now, not yet. He couldn’t. As it was, he needed to somehow get himself to understand that everything he’d made himself believe was a lie

By the time the cell bars came open and they were dismissed for lunch, Damen was nowhere closer to an understanding as he’d been when Jokaste had flipped his entire world upside down. Walking didn’t seem to make a difference. Nor did the steps, or the chow line that he waited on and shuffled through before he reached the food and realized that he didn’t have an appetite. 

And so he stepped out line, empty handed, and looked.

The sight of Laurent with everything so fresh in his mind was like the crack of a whip. Damen didn’t feel ready. He wanted to get Jokaste on the phone and have her tell him it was all a lie. He wanted to walk up to Laurent, and to make him promise that this was true.

He was sat in the far side of the cafeteria, his back to the rest of the room with Jord as the table’s only other occupant. Jord was doing the talking, it was impossible to tell what the context of the conversation was from the expression on his face or the lack of movement on Laurent’s part. Distance wasn’t the issue, because even when Damen was right in front of them and well within earshot, he still couldn’t make out a single thing. All he could hear was a woman’s voice, the fluidity compromised from the poor reception, over and over in his head. _You’ve already forgiven him for something he didn’t do._

Jord looked up when he noticed someone standing above them, and then even more up when he realized it was Damen. He set his cup down, sliding it aside like that would make room for Damen.

“Hey, man.” He nodded his head forward. “You’re not eating?”

“Orlant is looking for you,” Damen said. He had no idea if Orlant was well within Jord’s line of sight. “Something about Rochert. It sounded urgent.”

Jord pulled a face at that. His mouth twisted to one side with a resigned sound. Damen knew that something was going on with Rochert since the riot. His details on the matter were vague, but his hazard was enough to have Jord swinging his legs out from the bench, giving the room a long sweep.

“Thanks,” he murmured, hitting the back of Damen’s shoulder with the side of his hand as he walked around him, making for the direction Damen came from. Damen removed his hands from the folds of his pockets. He pulled in a breath of air, and then took up Jord’s spot.

Laurent hadn’t looked in his direction as they’d spoken. He hadn’t even shown acknowledgment when Damen’s voice had interrupted them, but he smiled now. It was innocuous, showing more in the lines of his face than anything, and it made Damen feel like he’d been stripped of some exterior layer.

Everything about him was so painfully familiar. Damen could have tried to convince himself that he’d relearned every part of Laurent in the past months, but the truth was that he’d never forgotten to begin with. Even when he’d resisted it, harboring as much resentment for him as the longing, he could still count each of Laurent’s golden lashes in his mind’s eye. He could feel the way Laurent’s skin warmed when he’d press his lips to his cheek, how he fit between his arms.

The look didn’t last long on Laurent’s face. Damen watched, mutely, as the small sign of happiness slipped away and reshaped into confusion. “What is it?”

Damen pulled at the fabric bunched around his stomach. Just his voice was enough to pierce through his skin. 

He leaned forward. He was aware that Laurent was watching him the way he might observe a caged lion.

“I want the truth,” Damen said. Simply. He was so absolutely sick of being fed lies, or half-truths, or whatever it was that this convoluted thing had been twisted into. He just wanted Laurent to say it. To come out with it, honestly, and to tell Damen that he’d never intentionally hurt him. 

Laurent’s lips moved wordlessly for a moment. His eyebrows did next, pinching together. 

“I want you,” Damen said again. “To tell me the truth.”

“What are you talking about?” Laurent asked. He spoke the words like they were each carefully selected. They undoubtedly were.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Laurent’s expression changed again, what was just a curious kind of confusion slowly altering to an alert one. It played out like a story, and the minor change in his eyes and the way that muscle tightened in his jaw sent Damen’s pulse to an erratic pounding. He felt it in every part of him, as Laurent looked at him differently. 

“Damen.”

It was all he said. He didn’t ask how Damen knew, nor did he show any inclination to say anything beyond his name. He just sat there, looking at Damen cagily like he knew what was going though his head. He probably did.

Damen leaned closer. He wouldn’t let Laurent slip away from him in defense, not with this. “You lied to me.” 

He’d meant to speak plainly. Anything that could be heard behind his voice was out of his control.

Laurent would have flinched, if he was the kind of person to do that. But being who he was, he instead made a sound and leaned farther back, away from Damen.

“I never lied,” he said. “I never said a single thing –“

Damen’s fist came down hard enough that it startled even Laurent. His cup fell over and rolled between them. “ _You -_ “

“Watch yourself!” A guard yelled.

Damen gripped the table’s edges. He knew it was that or he would instead grab Laurent by the arms and shake a reaction out of him. A confession. He looked only at him.

“Don’t,” Damen said. “Don’t do that.”

Laurent chanced a glance behind him. He looked around, like anyone in their vicinity cared enough to listen to this. Damen wanted them to try. “Maybe we shouldn’t discuss this here –“

“We’re going to discuss this _right now._ ” Damen stabbed the table with his finger. “And you’re going to tell me the truth. You’re going to stop acting like you don’t care.”

That, of all things, was what pulled a reaction out of Laurent. His features distorted so quickly that it took Damen by surprise. “You think I don’t care?” His palms were flat on the table as he spoke. “You think I enjoyed knowing that you –“ His eyes did something awful. It took up a place in Damen’s clogged throat. 

And then he pulled back. “I never said a single thing,” Laurent repeated. “You drew your own conclusions.”

Damen reminded himself that while in that moment he might not have cared, they were still in a prison, and there were still hundreds of men around them. He thought they should probably speak quieter. 

“And so a lie of omission is any better?” Damen said, louder. He thought his fingers might peel the pain off the table in steaks. “Do you know what you led me to believe? What you made me _think_? Laurent, I _hated you_ –“

The pivot of Laurent’s head was rapid. He looked at the garbage by the exit, his face still sour. “I’d rather not hear about it.” He spoke to that direction. “If you don’t mind.”

Damen dropped his head into his hands. He felt like they’d been running for miles. Like they’d been running for years. Away from each other, towards each other. And though they were here, now, they somehow still weren’t meeting.

So Damen said, softly, “Did you name me?”

Laurent turned his big blue eyes on Damen. And then he said, just as soft, “No.”

It was something like a cave in. Everything Damen had ever felt for Laurent, collapsing his chest and rearranging everything inside. Every emotion, every scrap of pain and hope and anger and need he’d ever felt for him, since the moment he’d locked eyes with him in an underground bar until now. It all muddled together, and ridded Damen of any of his remaining incense. All that was left was a steady throb, and a void in his heart that he wanted to finally, unreservedly be filled.

He asked, “Did you send the FBI to me?”

“No,” Laurent said.

He didn’t know why he was still clarifying. Maybe he just wanted to hear it again, the reassurance that Laurent had never turned on him. That thought hit him anew, in a way that reformed the way he saw Laurent now. _It was never him,_ he thought. _He’d never wanted to see me fall._

“Did you want me to go to prison?” Damen asked, one more time. Just to hear it one more time.

“No,” Laurent said. He slid one hand forward. “Damen, no.”

Damen only realized he’d grabbed Laurent when he felt the beat of his pulse under his touch. He thought about the marks his fingers would leave on his skin. He already wanted to kiss them.

“I don’t understand,” Damen said. Though he was coming to realize that there were some things he would just never wholly understand. Because there was one thing, one wound that he didn’t think could ever be mended. 

“Damen,” Laurent said. It was as if now that Damen had touched him, Laurent couldn’t seem to stop. He circled the hand Damen had on him with his own. He brushed the tips of his finger between Damen’s knuckles, up the winding lines of his veins. Neither of their hands were steady. 

“Damen.” Laurent looked in his eyes as he spoke. “I never have, and I never would betray you.”

Everything else, it was just background noise. Trays stacking, inmates arguing. Guards’ keys jingling as they walked around them in circles, above them on a beam that winded across the whole room. Laurent voice was background noise, filtering around the singular thought that Damen wasn’t able to shake.

Damen didn’t let go. He held on harder as he said, quietly, “You left me.”

It scarred him to say. To think it was difficult enough, the idea of Laurent no longer wanting a life with him. Because despite everything, this - overpowering, consuming revelation that Laurent had never actively hurt him, he’d still broken his heart. 

“I,” Laurent said.

His face was stripped of color. He tried to let go, Damen could feel it in the slight spasm against his grip. He didn’t let him. 

“Please.” It came out like a whisper. “Laurent. Just.” He moved his foot beneath the table, pressing his ankle against Laurent’s. “Stop running from me.”

Laurent didn’t raise his head from their linked hands as he said, “I’m not discussing this here.”

Damen pressed his lips together. “Fine.”

“I don’t think,” Laurent hesitated. Reworded. “We should talk tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Damen said. “Why don’t we just wait another three years?”

Laurent ignored that. “The yard has no privacy,” he said. He was speaking in a detached voice that Damen had heard only a few times before. When Laurent didn’t want to feel something. It only made Damen feel more. “And we’re not doing this in front of a crowd. I won’t…” 

Laurent’s throat rolled. “I won’t.”

Damen remembered the first time he’d seen Laurent here, under the scorching sun in the yard, the electric wired gates still separating them. They’d locked eyes. Damen had been unchained, locked inside a cage. Laurent’s hands were cuffed in front of him, coming back into Damen’s life like a storm. Damen had waited a night before talking to him then, too.

“Fine,” Damen said again. He would give Laurent that, one more night before he gave Damen his answers. After tonight, there would be no more hiding. 

Damen released his hold on Laurent’s hands. He slid his away, and used them as leverage to push himself up.

He looked down at Laurent. His biggest battle. His other half. 

“We’re both stuck in here, now,” Damen said to him. ”If you run from me again, I’ll catch you.”

Laurent didn’t have a plan.

It was not a position he favored being in, and was therefore only the second time he’d been in it. The first time was when he had left Damen. And now, the singular other time, when he had to face the fact that he had. 

Laurent still had no idea how to do that, despite how long he’d had to prepare for it. He’d never anticipated that he would need to explain it to him, that would have defeated the entire purpose of hiding himself from Damen. And then, well - Laurent had definitely never anticipated being back in Damen’s life, or Damen wanting him there for that matter. That would have been a fruitless, childish fantasy that would have only harmed him to entertain. And now that it was a reality, he didn’t have the first clue of how to go about it. 

Laurent had never seen Damen look at him the way he had when he’d wordlessly sat down in front of him. He’d thought that he’d seen every shade of Damen before this, but he was wrong. Some hazy mix of pain and confusion, and a longing that Laurent could only recognize because he’d felt it since he’d slipped away from Damen in the dark and turned his back on him forever.

He knew that Damen needed to process everything, even if he was too activated in that moment to realize it himself. It was a mindless, automatic thing for Damen to receive troubling news and allow it to drive him into action, but he needed time. 

Laurent didn’t want to tell him that, to make Damen feel like he took his knowledge of him for granted or like he just wanted to control Damen like he controlled everything else. He pinned it on their surroundings, and practicalities, and everything else that was valid and worth considering and not nearly as vital to Laurent as Damen handling this as best as he could.

The next eighteen-something hours was just Laurent going through the motions. He listened to comments on his ass in the shower. He stared at the wall in his cell. He ate cold eggs and something that resembled oatmeal. He folded hundreds of strangers shirts and responded to enough comments directed at him that Guymar and Orlant knew he was present and didn’t try to emphatically pull him into an actual conversation.

He didn’t see Damen.

It was unclear if this was Damen’s doing, or if it was due to Laurent not going out of his way to look for him. Probably more of the first, being that Damen somehow always made his presence known, even if it was unintentional. He had a way of taking up all the space in a room with his abnormal size and his inebriating presence. 

_He knows_ , Laurent thought, more than once. Far more than once. _He knows what you’ve been hiding from him this entire time, knowing what he believed._

He had no idea what to make of it all. Damen may now have lost his largest reason for resenting Laurent, but with that came Damen’s realization that in his eyes, Laurent had lied. And then, his other realization. 

Laurent felt the free block of the day approach like a handheld explosive lodged in his throat. He turned down the offers of a poker game, ignored the other less gracious offers, and took himself to their usual spot with steady feet and a drumming heartbeat. 

Laurent was there first. He reminded himself that he usually was, and that Damen was probably delayed because he was busy charming his way through everyone’s pockets, or always establishing some new deal. Or he decided that this was a never-ending headache and it wasn’t worth it. Or he was punishing Laurent for leaving by denying him now.

The door opened and closed around three more thoughts down. The sound was as discreet as the blink of an eye. Laurent turned around like it had been slammed shut behind him.

It was telling, Laurent thought, how facing Damen now felt like it had been an eternity since he last had. It could have been the additional lack of menial contact, or maybe it was the fear that his second chance was coming to an end.

Damen stood back, guarded. He was an anomaly in that way, so open in most ways and closed off in others. From the things that were right before him, only to be stifled by a translucent sense of repression. From his fears, or his emotions. But never Laurent. He watched Damen stand a few steps away with his hand on the knob and his eyes like a target on Laurent. Everything on the outside was muffled. There was nothing stopping Damen from turning him away, or making it clear that he didn’t want Laurent. 

Damen’s boots were the only sound of distraction as he put himself in front of Laurent, standing before him. He was so much taller, it was stupefying. He’d never made his height a threat, only an offering. Tension ribboned through Laurent as he faced it now; unable to differentiate which one he was experiencing. 

When Damen’s fingers came to rest on the back of Laurent’s neck, it was so unexpected that it startled a sound out of him, though he didn’t dare allow himself to speak. He stood, stiff with apprehension, until Damen drew him forward.

It was like breathing again. To feel Damen’s arms close around him, a barrier that blocked the rest of the world away was unexplainable. Their chests pressed together. Laurent fit his face into Damen’s neck, breathing him in. Minutes passed like this. Seconds. Laurent couldn’t know. He tried to measure the time in every beat of Damen’s heart against his own, and even that was too much.

“I’m so angry with you,” Damen murmured into his ear. His hold tightened around him, and Laurent thought he might weep. 

Damen stepped away then, and Laurent let him go. If Damen needed to feel in charge then he would give him that. As it was, he was walking a very, very fine line with him. The less commentary Laurent instigated, the better.

Damen turned away from him and walked up to the wall, bracing both hands against the stone. He leaned the flat of his forehead against it and took in two lungfuls of air, and then another. His fingers tapped an indistinct rhythm as he said, “Tell me why.”

Laurent rubbed his lips together. “Why –“

“Tell me why you left me,” Damen said, with his eyes on the wall and his back to Laurent. It was difficult to remember that they were holding each other just a moment ago. The shift in tone was so sharp, even Laurent struggled to keep up. He was struck again by how impossible this was, to give someone a reason that you’d never fully had to begin with.

Laurent made no move to approach him. “Does it even matter?”

“Of _course it_ –“ Damen whirled on him again. “How could it not matter?”

He hadn’t meant it like that, but it hardly made a difference. He tried again. “It’s in the past,” he said. It wasn’t enough. “I never meant to hurt you.”

That was even worse to say, and he instantly regretted it. It was one of the biggest lies Laurent had said to date. He may have never _wanted_ to hurt Damen, but he’d always known that he would.

Damen’s eyes narrowed into two slits of familiar disbelief. “You didn’t want to hurt me?” His voice was terrible. “You mean to say that you didn’t intend to rip my heart out when you went?”

It was like a physical punch. Laurent steeled himself for the rest. “No.” He tried to keep a calm voice. “I didn’t –“

“I just – “ Damen interrupted him with a raised hand, shaking it before doing the same with his head. “I only want to understand. You were…” His voice hadn’t changed. “ _everything,_ ” he said. ”And I would have done anything for you. I still would. And you just – you just gave up on us –“

“I never wanted to –“ Lie.

“Tell me,” Damen said again. He was pacing. Around the room, from Laurent to the wall. The space was about the size of their cells, so there wasn’t much room to be had between them to begin with. “Make me understand.”

“I _can’t,”_ Laurent said.

“Try!” Damen nearly yelled. He was only holding himself back with the faintest scrap of restraint. He’d never directed that tone of voice at Laurent, that particular shade to his eyes. He walked right up to Laurent, directly in his face with his hands unstill at his sides. “I need to know. Was it because of how I loved you?”

“No,” Laurent bit back. “ _No_. It was because of how I love _you_.”

It tore his lungs to scraps, even as Damen took a step back. Laurent felt as everything tipped over, unloading from his chest and spilling out of him. His body was moving with each breath. They were mirroring each other.

“You weren’t everything,” Laurent said. “You were the _only_ thing. You were all I had. And I couldn’t –“ He didn’t want to talk about this. He didn’t want to feel it again. “I couldn’t have that ripped away from me.”

“So you pushed me away yourself,” Damen said.

“You don’t understand,” Laurent said, frantic, because Damen was right. Laurent knew it. He’d known how stupid, how wrong he’d been the second he’d touched ground on a new continent. 

“Nothing lasted for me,” Laurent said. He was pushing every word out. It was unfamiliar territory for him to be so upfront with his thoughts, even with Damen. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like how vulnerable he felt under his stare. 

He pushed on. “My brother was dying,” he said. He wouldn’t talk about Auguste now. He couldn’t bear that too. “And I thought, if you left me too, I wouldn’t survive it.” 

The honestly burned. It felt like reaching a hand down his throat and pulling a boulder out, scratching and grating on the way up. He didn’t know how Damen did this so often, so effortlessly.

“I knew you would never let me go.” He couldn’t decipher the way Damen was looking at him. He didn’t think there was a word for it. “You would convince me to stay, and I couldn’t.” Laurent closed his eyes. It was almost easier like that, in the dark. “Because I was scared of how much I needed you. So I left.”

He left, and he didn’t look back. He kept going, and going, until he’d gone straight back into Damen’s arms. And here they were, together again, because their lives were one long path that just kept leading them back to each other.

Damen’s fingers closed around his shoulder. Laurent looked up at him, desperately. 

Damen said, “Did you think I would leave you?”

There was only one answer Laurent could give him. It was so hard to put himself back in that mindset, but he forced himself. He’d only realized the truth of it recently, after what he’d not too long ago had believed was too little too late. Laurent had always known, deep down. Far, far down, beneath all that fear and hatred. 

He shook his head, slowly.

“And you left me,” Damen said. Calmly, like Laurent had before. “So you would be the one to do it.”

His honesty. It was what Damen wanted, no matter how difficult it was. He nodded.

Damen was silent as the moment stretched out, allowing it to say what he wasn’t. His fingers moved beneath Laurent’s chin. “Do you know how much I missed you?”

“I ached for you,” Laurent said.

When Damen kissed him, it was like salvation. 

Everything with Damen happened in eternities or in the span of seconds. Kisses. Forgiveness. The lasting feeling of having Damen smile at him. Laurent didn’t bother to try and figure out how long those things lasted. He just knew that it was some point later, his lips buzzing numb and his fingers entangled in Damen’s when he spoke again. 

“Did you know it was Kastor?” Damen asked.

They were sitting on the floor, their legs spread out and their backs resting against the wall. Damen hadn’t looked at him as he asked.

Something within Laurent gave. He hadn’t – Not really. It couldn’t have been one of the random men in Damen’s circle; they simply didn’t know enough to be substantial witnesses in the kind of case Damen presented. The only people who’d known Intel on things like Damen’s most private plans and locations were himself, Nikandros and Kastor. And despite any of Laurent’s personal discrepancies, he’d always trusted Nikandros on Damen’s behalf.

“I assumed,” Laurent said, lightly. It was more than he wanted to say. Deserved or not, Damen used to look at Kastor the way Laurent would Auguste.

Damen’s expression gave nothing away. What could be seen of it from the turn of his head, at least. He looped his thumb around Laurent’s. 

“Let’s not talk about – “ He tipped his head back against the wall. 

“Tell me everything,” he said.

So he did. Because he told himself that he was going to give Damen all of him, including the parts that he was ashamed of. He told him about all of the discovered routes, and the new places he’d lived in where he could hardly even speak the language. He told him of the false identities, the names he’d gone under and the different ways he’d changed his appearance.

He told him of the nights alone, and the days around strangers where he’d wished he was alone. He told him about each and every voicemail he’d left to a number that was no longer in service, up until the mailbox was full of his apologies. So then he’d begun to write letters.

“Where are they?” Damen asked.

“The letters?” He was a little embarrassed, and prickly, but Damen also seemed a little happier. He tipped his own head back. “Scattered around the world.”

Damen hummed. It was a comfortable sound. “I’ll read them one day.”

He most certainly would not. “Yes, well,” Laurent shifted. “Unless you have an elaborate breakout plan you’d like to share with me, you’ll be a bit too old for that kind of travel.”

Damen gave him a look that was a mix of offense and amusement. “When we get out of here, we’re not staying in one place for more than a week.”

The choice of wording absorbed slowly. Laurent looked away, and wondered what he’d done to be allowed this kind of happiness again. 

Eventually Damen brought up what Laurent had been waiting for since they’d established why he’d left. _Why didn’t you just tell me?_

Why _didn’t_ he just tell Damen? Laurent had considered that before, more than once. And each time he’d disregarded the thought, waving away the possibility. He probably wouldn’t have believed Laurent, but that felt too easy. It was like he wasn’t meant to know, or at least not from Laurent. Laurent had made his bed three years ago, and now he had to lie in it. It was a wonderful, unintended mistake for Damen and Laurent to find each other again. If Damen chose to do that despite what he’d believed, it didn’t feel like Laurent’s place to alter it.

He only said, simply, “I deserved your anger.”

But he was done also thinking he didn’t deserve Damen’s love. They deserved each other, no matter what that said about the kind of people they were.

Damen sighed. Laurent glanced at him.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” Damen asked.

Laurent considered that too. And then he said, “Were you ever going to ask?”

It was said that people experienced grief in five stages: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. A year ago at this time, or even a few months ago, Damen would have been sure that he’d experienced all of the stages already. He’d denied Laurent having a hand in his downfall with everything in him. He’d certainly dabbled in anger. He’d bargained, even if that was just aimless debates with himself. He’d experienced an emptiness that he’d never thought possible, like he’d grown another body part when he met Laurent and then had it ripped away.

But acceptance. Damen had thought that he had nestled into acceptance, even if that was taken up in a form of hatred. But he was wrong. If he’d really accepted his grief, then Laurent wouldn’t have made his way back into Damen’s heart. He hadn’t broken down his walls. He’d just always been inside them.

It was hard to wrap his mind around the fact that everything that had recently occurred had all been in the span of two days. Everything that had been thrown at him, everything that had always been _right there_. It twisted and knotted inside him. To know all that he now did left him in this weird state of in-between. It made him want to beg for lost time back and resentful over that time anew. 

He didn’t know how to reconcile it. He didn’t know much, this soon. All he knew was that there was a reason why he’d always felt like Laurent was still there with him. Laurent wasn’t his end. He was his fate. 

He thought of that as he lay on his back, his head rested on Laurent’s lap. He focused on the fingers brushing through his hair, the nails that scraped against his scalp and sent a rush of shivers through his body. Neither of them were talking, which was its own kind of harmony. They could do this again, just enjoy each other. They had _been_ doing that, but now it felt – cemented. Irreversible. No longer something Damen had to tiptoe around, or pretend like he didn’t want. This was what they had now.

The feeling was tranquil. When Laurent spoke into it, his voice matched the tone.

“I used to think of you,” he said. His hand was at the nape of Damen’s neck. “Every day.”

He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to disturb the moment, or the way Laurent touched him like he was experiencing it for the first time. His eyes were closed.

“I kept track of the time difference between us,” he went on. His fingers were gentle as they smoothed the hair off Damen’s forehead. “No matter where I was in the world. So I knew when you were awake and when you were asleep.”

It was like puncturing a lung. It was a wound in different parts of his body, enough to throb without being fatal.

Damen hadn’t realized he’d tried to move until he felt the change of Laurent’s fingers in his hair, curling enough that a caress became a grip. It was subtle, clear enough that Damen understood. He made himself relax.

Laurent resumed his soothing touches like the minor interruption hadn’t happened. Damen’s eyebrows. The bridge of his nose. “I wondered if you smiled at anyone that day,” he said. He traced Damen’s cheekbone with his pinky. “Or if you thought of me.”

“You know I did,” Damen said.

He wondered if Laurent smiled. He wondered if it was sad. 

“Often?” 

“Well.” Damen shrugged. He opened his eyes to find Laurent gazing down at him. “Not as much as you did.”

And Laurent did smile. It was upside down, like this, and perfect. He tugged at the ends of Damen’s hair again, differently, and when Damen pulled him down it was because he was smiling too.

**Author's Note:**

> [ tumblr](http://laurent-ofvere.tumblr.com) [ twitter](https://twitter.com/damensthighs)


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